Atlanta-based Home Depot was hit Thursday with a potential class action lawsuit demanding $140 million in damages over pension fund management.

The complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia accused Home Depot of violating basic fiduciary duties under ERISA and abusing its employees' trust by mismanaging their 401(k) retirement plan.

According to the complaint, Home Depot has selected multiple poorly-performing funds for its 401(k) plan, allowed investment advisers to charge its employees unreasonable fees and turned a blind eye to a kickback scheme between an investment adviser and the plan's record-keeper.

A Home Depot spokesman said by email Thursday: “We haven't seen the suit yet, but we're proud of the financial support and opportunities for saving that we provide our associates.”

Jaime Pizarro and Craig Smith, both participants in Home Depot's retirement plan, filed the case on behalf of themselves and approximately 200,000 current and former plan participants. Their attorneys are with Sanford Heisler Sharp and Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw.

David Sanford, chairman of Sanford Heisler Sharp, said in a news release Thursday, “ERISA's fiduciary standards are strict and exacting. Home Depot retained too many poor-performing investment advisory options on the plan which were highly detrimental to the retirement savings of plan participants. Home Depot and the committees should be held to the highest standard as fiduciaries; instead, in this case, they fall below the lowest standard.”

With over $6 billion in assets, Home Depot's plan is one of the largest 401(k) plans in the country, but the lawyers said many of the plan's investment options regularly underperform their benchmarks.

They alleged the difference could mean the average Home Depot plan participant earns $100,000 less in retirement savings than employees in top-rated retirement plans of a similar size and that a $100,000 disparity translates to an additional 18 years of work per participant.

Norman Blumenthal, the founding partner at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw, said in the news release, “Congress enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act to provide basic protections for employees with respect to employee benefit plans offered by their employers. Home Depot engaged in a scheme to undermine these basic protections.”

As relief, they said, the class seeks:

1. Compensation for financial losses to plan participants and beneficiaries resulting from the plan's underperforming investments and excessive fees;
2. Reform to Home Depot's retirement plan that would remove any imprudent investments and ensure only reasonable investment advisory expenses; and
3. Removal of the fiduciaries who have allegedly violated their duties to the plan's participants and beneficiaries under ERISA.