United workers sue stock ownership plan over losses=20 =20 Friday February 28, 8:04 PM EST=20 SEATTLE, Feb 28 (Reuters) - A group of United Airlines employees filed suit against managers of the airline's employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) on Friday, claiming the plan's trustees failed to protect workers' interests and cost them billions of dollars in lost investments. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed in a U.S. district court in Chicago, says the committee that ran United's stock ownership plan was not objective when it chose to hold stock in United parent UAL Corp. (UAL) as its plunged in value. Hagens Berman, a Seattle-based legal firm representing the United workers, released a written statement on Friday detailing the suit. United, which is 55 percent-owned by its employees, did not immediately return calls for comment. =20 Shares of UAL, which filed the largest bankruptcy in aviation history in December, closed at $1.08 on Friday, down sharply from around $32 just prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The stock had already lost significant ground in the months before Sept. 11 as the economy sickened, and they were worth more than $100 each in the late 1990s. The lawsuit claims that "the plan trustees fell short of their duty when they failed to move ESOP holdings to less risky, more appropriate investments, all while failing to disclose that the stock was an imprudent investment," the statement said. State Street Bank, the plan's independent trustee, began to sell UAL stock last fall when it determined the plan had too much capital invested in UAL shares. United's ESOP now holds about 20 million UAL shares. State Street has been fighting in court since December to sell more shares to protect shareholder value, since they are generally rendered worthless in a bankruptcy. But a U.S. bankruptcy court judge ruled last week that it cannot sell more shares, because the sales would jeopardize an important tax benefit to United.=20 =A92003 Reuters Limited.=20