Former Price Chopper, Tops Supermarkets employees sue over retirement plans

Four former employees of Price Chopper and Tops Supermarkets have filed a lawsuit, claiming that their retirement savings plans were mismanaged.

Three of the employees worked for Price Chopper and the fourth worked for Tops Supermarkets, which in 2021 merged with The Golub Corp., Price Chopper’s parent company.

The employees were part of a plan, called the Northeast Grocery Inc 401(k) Plan, which had over $500 million in assets. The plan was managed by the Price Chopper Plan Committee.

The plaintiffs claim that the funds were invested in accounts that carried high fees and were lower performing compared to other plans invested in the market. They claimed that the committee did not consider lower-cost investment options, writing that the committee “deliberately selected and thereafter retained the more expensive share classes of the same fund even though identically managed, high yielding, higher returning types of the same fund were then available.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Albany in January, goes on to say that the mismanagement “had disastrous consequences for the plan and cost participants tens of millions of dollars in retirement savings.”

The plaintiffs are asking to be granted status as a class action lawsuit. They want the court to order the financial firms to surrender any profits that were made as a result of the transactions that hurt the members of the fund. In addition, they are asking the judge to remove members of the committee removed from their positions to appoint an independent fiduciary to manage the fund.

A spokesman for The Golub Corp. said the company could not comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was first reported by The Times Union.