22 Employee Benefits Cas. 2945, Pens. Plan Guide (Cch) P 23952e

**What Happened** Employees of Unisys Corporation sued their company over pension plan investments. The workers claimed that Unisys violated its duty to manage their retirement funds responsibly when it invested in products called Guaranteed Investment Contracts (GICs) from Executive Life Insurance Company. These investments apparently went bad, and the employees argued that Unisys should have known better than to choose them for the pension plan. **What the Court Decided** Both the lower court and the appeals court ruled in favor of Unisys. The courts found that the company did not breach its duty to employees when making these investment decisions. The judges determined that Unisys had followed appropriate standards for making prudent investment choices at the time, even though the investments later performed poorly. **Why This Matters for Workers** This ruling shows that employers have some protection when making pension investment decisions, as long as they follow reasonable standards when choosing investments. Workers cannot automatically win lawsuits just because their retirement plan investments lose money. To succeed in such cases, employees must prove their employer was actually careless or reckless in selecting investments, not just that the investments turned out poorly.