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October 13, 2009 at 08:00 PM
Jurors in a U.S. District Court in Minnesota have ruled in favor of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America a key issue and against it on another in connection with a class-action lawsuit involving indexed annuity marketing materials.
The plaintiffs in the case, Mooney vs. Allianz Life, said Allianz Life, Golden Valley, Minn., a unit of Allianz S.E., Munich, had implied that consumers who put money in various types of BonusMaxx, BonusDex, MasterDex and InfiniDex annuities would get “immediate” cash bonuses.
In reality, annuity holders had to leave their money in the annuities for at least 15 years to collect the bonuses, the plaintiffs alleged.
Lawyers at the Nygaard Law Firm, Leawood, Kan., won certification for a class that included most people who had bought 2-tiered indexed annuities from Allianz Life since Feb. 9, 2000. The class excluded people who bought the annuities while they were California residents and were ages 65 or older.
Lawyers for Allianz Life argued that, whatever the consumers who bought the annuities believed at the time of purchase, they ended up doing better than they would have done if they had invested their money in the stock market.
