Merrill Lynch’s $39 Million Cash Sweep Settlement Is 57% of the Class’s Own $68.6 Million Damages Figure — Filed After the Judge Cancelled the October 13 Trial, While the Official Case Website Still Lists That Trial as Upcoming

The Merrill Lynch settlement in Valelly is worth $39,000,000. According to AdvisorHub, which read the September 30, 2026 filings, that is “almost 57% of the $68.6 million that the plaintiffs had calculated as damages.” Our arithmetic: $39 million divided by $68.6 million is 56.9%, so the class would recover a little more than half of what its own lawyers had put on the table — before attorneys’ fees and administration costs, which have not been made public.

The claim was about cash, not investments. Merrill Edge self-directed retirement accounts automatically swept uninvested cash into deposit accounts at Merrill-affiliated banks through the Retirement Asset Savings Program (RASP). Those accounts paid 0.05% to 0.14% a year while other brokerages paid customers about 2%, according to Reuters. The plaintiff argued that Merrill’s customer agreement promised “a reasonable rate” of interest. Merrill denied wrongdoing.

The court-approved class notice defines the class as “All persons who had one or more Merrill Edge retirement accounts with cash balances that were swept pursuant to the RASP at any time during the period December 15, 2016 through March 15, 2020.” The notice lists the kinds of retirement accounts it means: IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, Inherited IRA, SEP IRA and SIMPLE IRA. The court certified that class in an opinion and order dated February 26, 2026 and appointed Sarah Valelly as class representative and Wolf Popper LLP as class counsel.

Cash swept outside that window is not covered, and neither are non-retirement accounts; non-retirement accounts are part of a separate proposed class action (see below). If you excluded yourself from the class by the July 22, 2026 deadline — or by September 15, 2026, the later deadline the court set for people JND identified to receive postcard notices — you are not in the class. The settlement motion asks the court to give people in the certified class an additional chance to opt out of the settlement.

We found no payout date, no claim process and no payment formula in any freely available source. On September 30, 2026, class counsel filed an unopposed motion asking Judge Valerie E. Caproni to preliminarily approve the settlement, approve a long-form notice, a postcard notice, an email notice and a summary notice, appoint JND Legal Administration as administrator, and schedule a final settlement hearing. The judge had said on September 8, 2026 that a preliminary approval hearing “will be set upon receipt of the Parties’ motion”; as of October 2, 2026 no date was on the public docket.

The Stipulation of Settlement (ECF No. 397), the supporting memorandum (ECF No. 399) and the supporting declaration (ECF No. 400) were not available free on CourtListener’s RECAP archive when we checked on October 2, 2026; only the two-page notice of motion (ECF No. 398) was. So we cannot tell you whether class members will have to file a claim or will be paid automatically, how much lawyers will ask for, or how the money will be divided. The class notice promised that “if Plaintiff wins or settles the lawsuit, you will be notified about how to get money or other benefits.”

One practical step: the official case website asks class members to tell the administrator about any change of email or postal address so that they can be reached about a settlement.

On October 2, 2026, the official website, MLRetirementAccountLitigation.com, still listed a Trial Date of October 13, 2026 with the status “Upcoming.” That trial is off. Judge Caproni’s order of September 8, 2026 reads: “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the final pretrial conference currently scheduled for Thursday, October 8, 2026, is CANCELLED. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the trial currently scheduled to begin in this matter on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, is CANCELLED.” The same order told the parties to file their preliminary approval motion by September 18, 2026; the motion was filed on September 30, and the docket shows an extension motion on September 15 and an order on it on September 17. The site also still listed the July 22, 2026 exclusion deadline as “Upcoming.”

Class members have no trial to attend in October. The case was filed on August 27, 2019, and the settlement ends it for the certified class if the court approves it.

On the same day the settlement was filed, a different judge in the same courthouse, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, ordered Merrill Lynch to face most of a separate proposed class action over cash sweeps covering retirement and non-retirement accounts, Reuters reported. That case, In re Merrill Lynch Cash Sweep Programs, No. 1:23-cv-10768, is not settled. Merrill had asked Judge Garnett to narrow the case in part because it removed the “reasonable rate” language from customer agreements in 2023 and 2024, according to Reuters.

Merrill has paid over cash sweeps before: in January 2025 it agreed to pay $25 million to settle cash sweep claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission, without admitting wrongdoing (Reuters). Other firms face similar suits. Reuters reported that a Manhattan federal judge granted final approval to a $70 million settlement with Oppenheimer & Co. on September 18, 2026, and AdvisorHub counted about 20 cash sweep cases pending in federal courts, citing the legal consultancy Rain Intelligence.

The administrator for the certified class is JND Legal Administration: Valelly v Merrill Lynch, c/o JND Legal Administration, PO Box 91219, Seattle, WA 98111; phone 1-833-207-0938; email info@MLRetirementAccountLitigation.com. Class counsel Wolf Popper LLP can be reached at outreach@wolfpopper.com, according to the class notice. We will update this article when the court sets a hearing or the settlement notice is published.