We’ve talked a lot on this blog about the due diligence obligations of fiduciaries and other advisors to pensions, 401(k) plans and the like when it comes to investment choices. A story yesterday offers the opportunity for a little thought experiment demonstrating why it matters, and why anything less than stringent oversight and investigation of investment choices will put fiduciary advisors front and center as potential targets of lawsuits.

The WSJ Blog yesterday had this description of litigation by a public employee pension fund against a hedge fund in which it had invested that managed to lose literally billions of dollars, in spectacular and newsworthy fashion: 

Amaranth, the hedge fund that lost $6.4 billion in a few days last fall in the worst debacle in the industry’s history, responded today to a lawsuit filed against it in March by the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association, or SDCERA. SDCERA is the only investor to have filed suit against the hedge fund. . . At the time it filed the lawsuit, SDCERA said Amaranth’s collapse resulted from “excessive and unbridled speculation in natural gas futures that was directly contrary to statements made to SDCERA that Amaranth would be diversified and risk controlled.”
Amaranth says SDCERA knew exactly what it was getting into. In its motion, it quotes the funds private-placement memorandum, which read in big bold letters: THE FUND IS A SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT THAT INVOLVES RISK, INCLUDING THE RISK OF LOSING ALL OR SUBSTANTIALLY ALL OF THE AMOUNT INVESTED.
[A lawyer for Amaranth] said in a statement that he hopes “SDCERA will now withdraw its suit and stop wasting the resources of its 33,000 county employees and pensioners on this misguided and ill-fated litigation.”

So here’s the thought experiment to play out, the line of dots to connect. We know we are currently watching the rise of a pension/401(k) investment plaintiffs bar, clearly modeled after the securities litigation class action bar, ready and waiting to sue pension advisors and anyone else in the line of fire for excessive fees, poor investment choices, and anything else that affects returns in the plans. We see here as well in this blog post from the WSJ Blog that Amaranth’s defense to litigation by a pension plan is that the plan and its advisors knew exactly what they were getting into and should take responsibility themselves for the risks they took. Now here is where we connect the dots – if the hedge fund’s lawyers are right, then aren’t the plan’s fiduciaries and other advisors potentially liable for breaching their own obligations to the plan and its participants to properly select and monitor plan investments? And if so, then their best defense should the newly forming class action bar come after them for this mess would be that, contrary to what the hedge fund’s lawyers say, they actually did full and complete due diligence, and therefore lived up to their obligations and cannot themselves be liable for the fact that the investment went south.

And at the risk of sounding like a scold, that, I suppose, is what I would like fiduciaries to take away from the story of the Amaranth collapse, that hedge fund issues can come back on them, and they need to take steps in advance to insulate themselves. Just something to muse over on an early summer weekend at the beach, right?