Eleventh Circuit Reverses Summary Judgment for Royal Caribbean, Holding ERISA Plaintiffs Need Not Always Provide “Apples-to-Apples” Comparator Evidence to Prove Objective Imprudence

In Johnson v. Russell Investment Management, LLC, No. 25-10692, — F.4th —-, 2026 WL 2387006 (11th Cir. Aug. 17, 2026), a breach of fiduciary duty action under ERISA, the Eleventh Circuit reversed summary judgment in favor of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and held that an ERISA plaintiff is not required in every case to identify an “apples-to-apples” comparator investment to establish objective imprudence. Plaintiff, on behalf of a class of similarly situated participants in the Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd Retirement Savings Plan, alleged that Royal Caribbean breached its fiduciary duty by imprudently selecting the Russell Target Date Funds to replace the Vanguard Target Date Funds in the Plan’s investment menu. Plaintiff claimed that the Russell funds’ distinguishing features, including their “to” glidepath, their bias toward emerging markets and real assets, their high fees relative to peers, and their underperformance, rendered them an objectively imprudent investment. The district court granted summary judgment on the ground that Plaintiff was required to, but did not, submit evidence that the Russell funds were objectively imprudent compared to another target date fund with the same investment strategy and risk profile, deeming the Vanguard and American Funds comparators improper and Russell’s custom benchmark the only proper comparator.

Reviewing the grant of summary judgment de novo, the court explained that under Pizarro v. Home Depot, Inc., 111 F.4th 1165 (11th Cir. 2024), fiduciary liability requires both procedural imprudence and loss causation, and that loss causation requires a plaintiff to prove that an investment was not objectively prudent, meaning it fell outside the range of reasonable judgments a fiduciary could make. The court held that although comparator evidence may be relevant to establishing loss causation, it is not always necessary, because the objective prudence inquiry is context specific and varies from case to case. The court reaffirmed the qualitative and quantitative framework from Pizarro: a factfinder may consider qualitative evidence such as whether the fund was a popular option offered by comparable employers’ plans and whether it received positive ratings from industry analysts, and may consider quantitative evidence such as fees and performance relative to appropriate contemporaneous peers and benchmarks. The court emphasized, however, that quantitative evaluation may be applied only to apples-to-apples comparisons that control for differences in risk profile, strategy, and asset allocation, so that historical underperformance reflects real economic inferiority rather than a different investment objective. The court observed that its approach was consistent with those of the Sixth and Third Circuits, which have likewise declined to impose a mechanical checklist on the fact-intensive prudence inquiry.

Applying these principles, the court explained that a plaintiff need not have both qualitative and quantitative evidence and may establish loss causation through either, noting that some of the most objectively imprudent investments will lack an apples-to-apples comparison precisely because they are such objectively bad fiduciary decisions. The court found that the mere fact that the Russell funds slightly underperformed their own custom benchmark, by an asset-weighted average of 0.71 percent, did not answer Plaintiff’s theory that the very features baked into that custom benchmark were what made the funds objectively imprudent from the outset. The court expressly made no determination about whether the record warranted summary judgment under the appropriate standard. The court reversed and remanded for the district court to consider the full record on the issue of objective imprudence. The court also noted that Plaintiff and Russell had reached a settlement and jointly moved to dismiss the appeal as to Russell, leaving Royal Caribbean as the only remaining appellee.