Faculty Challenge UW's Administration of UW Retirement Plan and UW Voluntary Investment Plan

This is a breach of contract action regarding the University of Washington's mismanagement of the University of Washington Retirement Plan (UWRP) and Voluntary Investment Plan (VIP).  Dr. Marshall Horwitz, Dr. Richard Johnson, and Dr. David Layton all discovered that they had not received all the matching contributions that UW promised to contribute to their UWRP accounts.  After the University declined to correct this issue, they then brought this action seeking to fix this problem for all affected plan participants.

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While this action was pending, UW sent notices to putative class members about "corrections" that UW was making to retirement accounts.  These "corrections" do not fix UW's failure to provide matching contributions but rather deal with another breach of the retirement plan terms--UW failed to properly apply IRS contribution limits to UWRP and VIP contributions.  Further, UW maintained that the only way to challenge UW's mismanagement of the retirement plans was by filing an administrative appeal following the notice of correction.  UW moved to dismiss the action on that basis.

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King County Superior Court Justice Brian McDonald recently denied UW's motion to dismiss and granted plaintiffs' motion to strike UW's administrative appeal defense.  The action remains in the pre-class certification stage at this time.