AME Church Employee Retirement Fund

This docket consolidates claims brought by current and retired clergy and employees of the African Methodist Episcopal Church alleging that the Church, its officials, and third-party service providers administering its retirement plan breached fiduciary duties and mismanaged the plan, resulting in substantial losses to plan participants. Centralized in the Western District of Tennessee in 2022, the docket carries 6 pending actions, a small population reflecting a single, well-defined plan-mismanagement claim rather than a diffuse mass-tort or consumer theory.

For a funder, this docket is best understood as an ERISA-adjacent fiduciary-breach and plan-recovery matter rather than a personal-injury or consumer mass tort, with claim value tied to the documented losses suffered by the retirement plan and its participants rather than individualized injury damages. One institutional defendant in this docket, a third-party plan administrator, has already reached a settlement addressing a substantial share of the alleged plan losses, which meaningfully de-risks the remaining claims against other defendants by establishing a partial recovery baseline and a body of developed factual record on how the alleged losses occurred.

Given the small action count and the specialized fiduciary-duty and plan-administration issues involved, this is a matter for bespoke, single-matter underwriting rather than a portfolio product, and firms representing plan participants in the remaining claims are the more realistic financing counterparty. Criterica Capital's commercial litigation finance line is the applicable product, with pricing informed by the settlement history already established in this docket. A structure and litigation brief on the current claim population and settlement posture is also available.

Pre-settlement funding is a non-recourse purchase of a portion of the proceeds of a pending legal claim — not a loan. If the case does not result in a recovery, nothing is owed. Rates, fees, and repayment terms are disclosed in full in the funding agreement, which the applicant’s attorney reviews before signing. Availability and terms vary by state.