MetLife Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Delayed Retirement Payouts

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MetLife has been hit with a class action lawsuit saying it delays retirement payouts.

Plaintiff Edward Roycroft is a 75-year-old who claims that he had MetLife retirement benefits through an employer, but was was denied his benefits when they were due to him.

He claims that over the past 25 years, the company has been withholding benefits, garnering more than $500 million in profits as a result.

Allegedly, Roycroft retired in 1999 and didn’t receive benefits he was owed.

He claimed that he had to call the company in 2012, at the age of 70, to see if he was owed annuity benefits.

Allegedly, he received a written communication in response that did not acknowledge the fact that the company was 13 years late in paying annuity benefits.

Additionally, Roycroft claims that the company “did not provide any basis whatsoever for [Roycroft] to verify the amount owed him, and did not acknowledge that plaintiff was owed interest or other additional consideration from MetLife’s decision to wrongly take possession and ownership over his funds for as much as 13 years.”

Roycroft was allegedly then paid a check in 2013 for $2,508.36, the amount he should have been paid in 1999 when he retired.

The Metlife class action lawsuit says this amount did not include any interest accrued over 13 years, or any profits wrongfully earned by MetLife from the funds.

He claims that the company does not sufficiently attempt to contact beneficiaries when their benefits are available, and when they fail to reach the beneficiary, keep the funds.

Allegedly, the company only sends two letters to a beneficiary — one when the person is 65 and one when they are 70.5, and if they receive no response from these letters, make no further attempt to contact the beneficiary.

Additionally, the MetLife retirement benefits class action lawsuit claims that under unclaimed property law, retirement benefits companies like MetLife are required to turn over unclaimed benefits to the state, but the company failed to do this.

The MetLife retirement benefit delay class action lawsuit claims that the company has acknowledged that it owes money to as many as 30,000 retirement beneficiaries. Additionally, the company itself also estimates that it owes more than $500 million in unpaid annuity benefits.

Roycroft’s MetLife class action lawsuit states that the problem is “especially egregious in light of its failure to pay death benefits in connection with the company’s life insurance business that resulted in the company paying $500 million in overdue death benefits.”

Allegedly, MetLife acknowledged the problem of unpaid benefits, but then took more than two months to hire advisors to help them take stock of the scope of the problem and determine how best to move forward.

Roycroft is represented by Kevin Barrett and Gregory Y. Porter of Bailey & Glasser LLP; and Norman Berman, Nathaniel L. Orenstein, Mark A. Delaney, and John H. Sutter of Berman Tabacco.

The MetLife Unpaid Retirement Benefits Class Action Lawsuit is Edward Roycroft v. Metlife Inc., et al., Case No. 1:18-cv-05481-AKH, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.