Vanguard Group founder John Bogle may be 80 years old, but the crusader for individual investors is still going strong, continuing to lash out at the lazy, incompetent, and conflicted institutional money managers who have failed in their fiduciary responsibilities to their investors.

In a brilliant op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Bogle writes that "... far too many of our corporate and financial agents have failed to honor the interests of their principals -- the mutual fund investors and pension beneficiaries to whom they owed a fiduciary duty. The ramifications were widespread -- for the failure of money managers to observe the principles of fiduciary duty played a major role in allowing our corporate managers to place their own interests ahead of the interests of their shareholders."

The U.S. Supreme Court in LaRue vs. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates has just given individual investors the right to sue under ERISA for breach of fiduciary duty to recover individual losses to an individual 401(k) or other defined contribution plans. Previous Supreme Court decisions had pertained to defined benefits plans. Prior to LaRue v. DeWolff, individuals were limited to participating in class action suits for relief for the plan as a whole. Now, individual investors can sue to be "made whole" as individuals, and do not have to settle for equitable relief among all plan investors.

Mr. LaRue had sued his former employer DeWolff, Boberg & Associates for breach of fiduciary duty when it failed to follow his instructions to move some of his 401(k) money to different investments. His initial suit was to recoup a personal loss to be paid into his individual account. Having been denied by the Fourth Circuit Court under two different statutes of ERISA sec. 502, Mr. LaRue appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus doing an untold number of individual investors a great service.