TevlinGleadle is very pleased to announce that on October 31, 2008, Murray Tevlin and Dan Gleadle appeared before Madam Justice Ballance of the BC Supreme Court and the Court approved the settlement in the terms proposed. The Court approved the overall $5.75 million dollar settlement amount, the legal fees of class counsel calculated at 20% of the amount recovered, a proposed fee to Mr. Gregg for his hundreds of hours work advancing the claim on behalf of the class, and the method of distribution of the net amount recovered to the class members.
Now that the settlement is approved, certain further work remains to be done to complete the settlement.
Firstly, we will work with defence counsel and the Court to have the formal court orderer entered as an order of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. This work is now underway.
The court ordered that the defendants pay the settlement amount to a Trust Company nominated by Class Counsel, by December 1, 2008. We are in the process of identifying a suitable Trust Company to receive and disburse settlement funds.
Once settlement funds are in the hands of the Trust Company, a portion of the funds will be used to pay legal fees and the fee to Mr. Gregg, and a portion of the remaining funds will be reserved to pay the costs of distribution, indluding actuarial costs to determine individual entitlement.
Plaintiff’s counsel has engaged the services of an actuary, Mr. John Christie, who will do the work needed to determine the actual entitlement of individual class members based on actuarial principles. This work will involve liaising with Freightliner’s Counsel and its actuaries to obtain information about the pension rights of individuals.
Until the actuary, Mr. Christie, has obtain necessary information and completed required calculations, we do not know the full details of which persons will share, nor the actual amount to be distributed to each person.
Monies to be distributed to class members will be treated as taxable income, and before any payments can occur, it will be necessary for class counsel and counsel for Freightliner to agree on the required “withholding”. Monies withheld in this manner will be remitted by the Trust Company to Canada Revenue Agency(“CRA”) for each recipient, to the tax account for that recipient, at an appropriate rate. It may be necessary to obtain a pre-clearance from CRA for the appropriate withholding percentages. Monies withheld in this manner may or may not be recoverable by individual recipients when they file their individual tax returns. Each recipient of monies should obtain tax advice from their financial advisors as to the tax treatment of monies withheld from the districtuion. It is expected that when monies are distributed, T slips will also be delivered.
It is important that we have on hand up-to-date contact information for everyone who believes that he or she may be entitled to share in the distribution. Current information should be sent to TevlinGleadle by email at the email address ktorgerson@tevlingleadle.com.
Distribution of entitlement of the monies recovered in this pension class action will not be handled by Freightliner, but instead by the Trust Company nominated by TevlinGleadle, upon instructions from TevlinGleadle.
A copy of the Order approving the settlement can be found here.