The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama has dismissed an eight-count lawsuit filed by former employees of Radiance Technologies, an employee-owned defense contractor headquartered in Huntsville. In an opinion issued late last week, U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze dismissed all claims without prejudice. Maze held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring certain direct fiduciary-duty claims; the remaining state-law claims were preempted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA); and the plaintiffs’ ERISA claims failed because they did not exhaust the plan’s internal administrative remedies before suing. The court agreed with the defendants that state-law claims “related to” the plan were barred by ERISA preemption and that the ERISA counts could not proceed due to failure to exhaust the plan’s appeals process. “[Radiance Technology] successfully countered a baseless lawsuit against our company this week, with the case being dismissed outright!” Town said on X.