Opinion ID: 2801225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 1999 Transaction

Text: We affirm the district court’s determination on summary judgment that the Plan Participants lacked standing to pursue relief on the 1999 Transaction, in which JDS preferred shares were transferred to a trust rather than distributed to Hollister employees. The fact that the plaintiffs are former—not current—plan participants does not undermine their statutory standing under ERISA. See LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & Assocs., Inc., 552 U.S. 248, 256 (2008); Harris v. Amgen, Inc., 573 F.3d 728, 735 (9th Cir. 2009). However, the stacked assumptions and speculation surrounding this claim do not support Article III’s standing requirements of traceability and redressability. Bernhardt v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 279 F.3d 862, 869 (9th Cir. 2002) (noting that injury must be “fairly traceable” to alleged misconduct and that a claim is not redressable as “too speculative if it can be redressed only through ‘the unfettered choices made by independent actors not before the court’”) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)).