Dempsey v. Verizon Communications Inc.
- Alvin Hellerstein
- 1:24-cv-10004
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Dempsey v. Verizon Communications, Judge Hellerstein granted defendants’ motion to strike a declaration from the amended complaint.
The plaintiffs and defendants in the putative ERISA class action; the declaration was removed from the docket, but the complaint paragraphs relying on it remained.
What happened
In Dempsey v. Verizon Communications Inc., the plaintiffs brought a proposed class action under the federal pension-benefits law known as ERISA. They alleged that defendants breached fiduciary duties by transferring pension risks to two allegedly high-risk insurers.
The amended complaint included a declaration by Thomas D. Gober, a certified fraud examiner, who offered an opinion about the insurers’ risks. The declaration was prepared after the case began for use in the litigation and relied on the amended complaint.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein granted defendants’ unopposed motion to strike the declaration from the docket, while allowing plaintiffs to refile it later if appropriate. He also declined to strike complaint paragraphs that relied on the declaration and said he would not consider the declaration when deciding defendants’ pending motion to dismiss.
The detailed version
- Dempsey v. Verizon Communications Inc. · No. 1:24-cv-10004
- Alvin Hellerstein
- June 18, 2025
Background
Plaintiffs filed a putative class action under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), alleging that defendants breached fiduciary duties by converting federally regulated pension benefits into annuity insurance contracts through pension risk transfers. The transfers involved The Prudential Insurance Company of America and RGA Reinsurance Company, which plaintiffs allegedly characterized as high-risk insurers.
Plaintiffs attached Exhibit A to their amended complaint. Exhibit A was a declaration by Thomas D. Gober, a certified fraud examiner with experience investigating accounting fraud in the insurance industry. Gober stated that, in his professional opinion, the two insurers were among the riskiest insurance companies in the pension-risk-transfer market and that pensioners could suffer consequences if affiliated reinsurers could not satisfy their reinsurance obligations.
The Motion
Defendants filed an unopposed motion to strike Exhibit A. The court explained that Gober’s declaration was drafted after the action began for purposes of the litigation and relied on the amended complaint rather than serving as a document on which the complaint itself was based. The court also stated that the declaration could not be considered when evaluating the sufficiency of the amended complaint on defendants’ pending motion to dismiss.
Ruling
Judge Hellerstein granted defendants’ motion to strike Exhibit A from the amended complaint, without prejudice to plaintiffs’ refiling it later if and when appropriate. The court declined to strike the paragraphs in the amended complaint that relied on Gober’s declaration. It directed the Clerk of Court to strike the declaration from the docket and close the motion.
The opinion’s entered-date text appears garbled as “June UK: 2025”; this summary uses the supplied filing date of June 18, 2025.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.