Participants and beneficiaries of The North Highland Company Employee Stock Ownership Plan who held vested North Highland ESOP Holdings shares between October 1, 2016 and May 30, 2025 will be paid automatically from Plan records under a $2,375,000 ERISA class action settlement; there is no claim form to file. The settlement is pending final approval — objections are due October 6, 2026, and anyone who wants a retirement-account rollover instead of a check must submit the Rollover Form by November 5, 2026.
Current Status
There is no claim form and nothing to file. Participants and beneficiaries who held vested North Highland ESOP Holdings shares in the Plan between October 1, 2016 and May 30, 2025 are automatically in the settlement class, and the Settlement Administrator calculates each share from records provided by the Plan's recordkeeper. The settlement is not final: a fairness hearing is set for November 5, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. EST in the Northern District of Georgia, and payments are made only if the court grants final approval and that approval survives any appeal. October 6, 2026 is the deadline to object, and objecting is the only avenue open, because the class was certified as a non-opt-out class under Rule 23(b)(1). No payment date has been announced as of September 7, 2026.What Changed Recently?
The case is Howell v. Argent Trust Company, et al., No. 1:22-cv-03959-SDG, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. It has been pending since September 30, 2022. The parties reached a settlement through mediation, the settlement agreement is dated August 14, 2025, and notice has since gone out to the class with a fairness hearing set for November 5, 2026.The class representatives allege that fiduciaries of The North Highland Company Employee Stock Ownership Plan — formerly The North Highland Company Employee Stock Ownership and 401(k) Plan — breached their duties under ERISA in connection with transactions involving the stock of North Highland ESOP Holdings, Inc. between 2016 and 2021. The complaint includes an allegation that the Plan's stock was improperly diluted during, and for a period after, an October 2016 recapitalization. These are allegations that no court has decided.
The defendants are Argent Trust Company, North Highland ESOP Holdings, Inc., The North Highland Company, Inc., The North Highland Company LLC, The North Highland Holding Co., LLC, and four individual defendants named in the complaint. They deny all claims and say they acted prudently and in the best interests of the Plan's participants and beneficiaries at all times. The notice states that nothing in the settlement is an admission or concession of any fault or liability, and that the parties settled to avoid the uncertainty, expense and burden of continued litigation.
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Who Qualifies?
The settlement class is every participant in The North Highland Company Employee Stock Ownership Plan, and the beneficiaries of those participants, who held vested shares in the Plan in North Highland ESOP Holdings, Inc. at any time between October 1, 2016 and May 30, 2025.Excluded are the individual defendants and their immediate families, along with the legal representatives, successors and assigns of any excluded person.
Membership comes from Plan records, not from anything a class member submits. A preliminary review of those records identified 3,543 settlement class members, and the mailed notice went to the people those records identify. Both current participants and former participants who have already taken their distributions are covered by the class definition, since it turns on holding vested shares at any point in the class period rather than on holding them today.
How Much Can You Get?
The settlement establishes a Qualified Settlement Fund of $2,375,000. What class members divide is the Net Settlement Amount: that fund, plus any interest it earns, minus court-approved attorneys' fees and costs and minus administrative expenses.Class counsel will ask the court for fees and costs of no more than 33 1/3 percent of the settlement amount, which the notice puts at $791,666, and separately for litigation expenses the notice expects to come in under $25,000. The court decides what to award and may award less than what is requested.
On those figures alone, and setting administrative expenses aside because the notice does not estimate them, roughly $1.56 million would be left for 3,543 class members — an average of about $440 each. That is arithmetic from the notice's own numbers rather than an official estimate, and no individual should read it as their share.
The actual split runs through a Plan of Allocation the court has to approve, described in Exhibit E to the settlement agreement. It allocates the Net Settlement Amount pro rata, taking into account the number of shares or the vested balances each class member held during the class period. Someone who held a large vested balance across the full period will receive materially more than someone who vested late or held little, and the Settlement Administrator's calculations are final and binding under the notice.
Do You Need to File Anything?
No. There is no claim form, no documentation to upload, and no identifier to enter in order to be paid — which is why this page lists Proof Required as Automatic Payment rather than "No." A class member who does nothing is mailed a check at the address the Settlement Administrator has on file.There is one optional election. Because this is a retirement plan case, a class member may instead direct their share into an individual retirement account or a qualified employer plan by completing the Rollover Form on the settlement website on or before November 5, 2026. Starting the online form requires the LoginID and PIN printed on the mailed notice, and the form asks for the receiving account's details, a date of birth, a Social Security number and a signature. An incomplete or unsigned form results in a check rather than a rollover, and so does a rollover the receiving institution declines. It is a payment-election step, not a claim: skipping it changes how the money arrives, not whether it arrives.
The notice states that payments made by check are subject to automatic tax withholding and reporting as determined by the Settlement Administrator, and that payments made as a rollover are not subject to automatic withholding. Whether a rollover is the right choice in any particular situation is a question for the IRS or a qualified tax professional.
The one thing worth doing either way is confirming the Settlement Administrator has a current mailing address, since checks go to the address on file and the settlement website carries an address update form for exactly that.
What Are the Deadlines?
October 6, 2026 — objections. A class member objecting to any part of the settlement, or to the requested attorneys' fees and costs or administrative expenses, must file the objection and any supporting documents with the Clerk of Court and serve copies on class counsel and defense counsel, postmarked at least 30 calendar days before the fairness hearing. The notice requires an objection to identify the case name and number, give the objector's contact details, describe the position and its factual and legal grounds, attach the supporting documents, name any attorney representing the objector, and carry the objector's signature. An objection that does not meet those requirements will not be considered.October 22, 2026 — notice of intent to appear. A class member who wants to speak at the fairness hearing must give class counsel and defense counsel notice postmarked at least 14 calendar days before the hearing, and must also comply with the objection requirements in order to speak.
November 5, 2026 — the optional Rollover Form, and the fairness hearing itself, at 2:00 p.m. EST.
There is no exclusion deadline, because there is no exclusion. The class was certified for settlement purposes under Rule 23(b)(1), and the notice states that class members are bound by the settlement and any judgment entered in the case. Our explainer on opting out of a class action covers why mandatory classes work differently from the opt-out settlements most consumers meet.
How Do You Take Action?
For most class members the answer is that there is nothing to do, and that is by design. If a notice arrived, the Plan's records already identify the recipient and the share is calculated and paid without any step from them.The official settlement website is NH ESOP Settlement.com, which hosts the notice, the settlement agreement and its exhibits including the Plan of Allocation, the operative complaint, the important-dates page, the Rollover Form login, an address update form and a contact page for reaching the Settlement Administrator. Reading the Plan of Allocation is the only way to see exactly how an individual share is computed; this page summarizes it, and the settlement agreement controls wherever the two differ. Every paper filed in the case is also available through the federal judiciary's PACER system.
No class member needs to hire a lawyer. The court appointed Bailey & Glasser LLP as class counsel, and that firm represents every class member in connection with the settlement. Anyone who prefers their own lawyer may hire one at their own expense. The notice also states that neither The North Highland Company nor its current or former employees, attorneys or representatives may advise class members on what to choose or how to proceed.
What Happens Next?
Class counsel's full application for attorneys' fees and costs and administrative expenses is due to be filed with the court on or before the fairness hearing and posted to the settlement website. At the hearing on November 5, 2026 the court will decide whether the settlement is fair, reasonable and adequate, will rule on that application, and will consider any objections that were filed on time. The notice states that if the hearing is rescheduled, or held by video conference or telephone, a notice will be posted on the settlement website — so check there rather than assuming the date holds.If final approval is granted and nobody appeals, the notice says distribution would likely occur within approximately four months of the final approval order, absent unforeseen circumstances. The settlement website's rollover page puts the first distribution at within sixty days of that order. The two figures come from the same administrator and have not been reconciled publicly, and no payment date has been announced either way. An appeal changes the picture entirely: the notice warns that an appeal of the final approval orders may take several years, and there are no payments at all if the settlement agreement is terminated.
What the Release Covers
If the court approves, every settlement class member and anyone claiming through them releases the defendants and the Released Parties defined in the settlement agreement. The released claims are claims with respect to the Plan that were asserted in the class action against the defendants, or that could have been asserted against them in connection with the Plan. The governing language is in Article 3 of the settlement agreement, which the notice points to expressly because its own summary is not binding.Because the class is a mandatory Rule 23(b)(1) class, that release binds every class member if the court approves, whether or not they take any action and whether or not they cash a check. Anyone who considers it a bad trade has one avenue, and it closes October 6, 2026.
Argent Trust Company, the trustee named as a defendant here, has been a defendant in other ESOP valuation cases as well, including the Dallas BBQ ESOP settlement in the Southern District of New York. Those are separate cases with separate class definitions; being in one says nothing about being in another.
Sources and Verification
• Official Settlement Website — home, FAQs, important documents, important dates and the Rollover Form login• Notice of Class Action Settlement in the North Highland ESOP Litigation — the nine-page class notice, including the class definition, the fee statement and the objection requirements
• Class Action Settlement Agreement dated August 14, 2025, and Exhibit E (Plan of Allocation), posted on the settlement website
• Howell v. Argent Trust Company, et al., No. 1:22-cv-03959-SDG (N.D. Ga.) — docket and filings via PACER
• U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration — background on ERISA's fiduciary standards for employee stock ownership plans
Questions
Do I need to file a claim for the North Highland ESOP settlement?
No. There is no claim form. If the court grants final approval, the Settlement Administrator calculates each class member's share from records provided by the Plan's recordkeeper and mails a check. The only optional step is the Rollover Form, which directs that share into an individual retirement account or a qualified employer plan instead of a check.
Can I opt out of the North Highland ESOP settlement?
No. The class was certified for settlement purposes under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(1), which is a non-opt-out class. The notice states plainly that class members cannot exclude themselves and are bound by the settlement and any judgment if the court approves it. A class member who disagrees can object by October 6, 2026 instead.
How much is each North Highland ESOP class member likely to receive?
The notice does not publish a per-person figure. It reports a $2,375,000 Qualified Settlement Fund, attorneys' fees and costs of no more than 33 1/3 percent of that amount, or $791,666, plus litigation expenses expected to come in under $25,000, and roughly 3,543 settlement class members. On those figures alone the net fund works out to an average of about $440 a person before administrative expenses, which is arithmetic rather than an official estimate. Individual shares will differ, because the Plan of Allocation divides the money pro rata by the shares or vested balances each class member held during the class period.
What is the deadline for the North Highland ESOP Rollover Form?
November 5, 2026, the same day as the fairness hearing. Submitting the form online requires the LoginID and PIN printed on the mailed notice. A class member who does not submit one, or who submits an incomplete or unsigned one, is mailed a check instead — the form changes how the money arrives, not whether it arrives.
What is the North Highland ESOP lawsuit about?
The class representatives allege that fiduciaries of The North Highland Company Employee Stock Ownership Plan breached their duties under ERISA in connection with transactions involving North Highland ESOP Holdings, Inc. stock between 2016 and 2021, including an allegation that the Plan's stock was improperly diluted during and after an October 2016 recapitalization. The defendants deny all claims and say they acted prudently and in the best interests of participants. No court has decided the allegations, and the settlement is not an admission of fault or liability.
When will North Highland ESOP settlement payments be made?
No payment date has been announced. Payments depend on the court granting final approval at the November 5, 2026 fairness hearing and on that approval surviving any appeal, which the notice warns can take several years. Absent an appeal, the notice says distribution would likely occur within roughly four months of the final approval order; the settlement website's rollover page puts the first distribution at within sixty days of that order.
