A Jorden Burt LLP defense team has obtained a decisive victory for John Hancock in Nichols v. John Hancock Life Insurance Company, a putative nationwide class action. On September 22, 2009, a federal district court judge in the Northern District of Alabama issued an order granting a motion to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint, which asserted a single count for breach of contract. The plaintiff was the owner of a Hancock variable annuity contract issued to him as beneficiary of his mother's VA contract upon her death, pursuant to his exercise of the contract's "stretch" option instead of accepting the cash death benefit. The gravamen of his complaint was that Hancock improperly charged mortality and expense fees on the separate account funds in his variable annuity because no death benefit was provided under his "stretched" contract.

Hancock's motion to dismiss - which came on the heels of the defendant's removal of the lawsuit to the federal district court from a state court in Alabama - set forth a number of grounds for dismissal, including Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act preclusion, and preemption based on the National Securities Market Improvement Act of 1996. But on the strength of the briefing alone, Judge L. Scott Coogler found sufficient bases for dismissal in the motion's traditional breach of contract arguments. Specifically, based on the plain language of the contract, he determined "it is evident that there are no provisions that a mortality charge or any fee would be collected in exchange for a death benefit. Nothing in the Contract ties any fee solely to the guarantee of a death benefit."