Primerica
October 14, 2026
ATLANTA, Georgia - October 14, 2026
The Court of Appeals of Georgia has vacated an emergency injunction that Primerica won last December against Osaic Wealth, Inc. and a West Virginia advisory firm it accuses of raiding one of its branch offices. The appeals court sent the case back to the trial judge to explain two threshold rulings before the order can stand.
The decision in Osaic Wealth, Inc. et al. v. Primerica Financial Services, LLC (No. A26A1288) came down October 14, 2026. It does not decide who is right about the alleged raid. The panel faulted the trial court's order for skipping past the defendants' challenges to the court's jurisdiction and their demand that the dispute go to arbitration.
The fight started on October 17, 2025. That day six registered independent-contractor representatives resigned from a Primerica Financial Services branch in Hurricane, West Virginia, affiliated with Osaic and began selling financial products for it right away. On November 3, 2025, Primerica sued Osaic and Legacy Investment Advisors and Wealth Management, LLC in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County, Georgia. The company alleges the departures were a coordinated raid. It says the defendants offered the representatives cash payments to move their customers' investments to Osaic, and that the departing representatives accessed and downloaded large amounts of confidential customer account data from Primerica's systems in breach of their contractual and legal duties.
Primerica filed an emergency motion on November 20, 2025, asking the court to bar the defendants from using that information and to order expedited discovery. On December 5, Legacy moved to dismiss, arguing it is a West Virginia company with no contacts in Georgia. The same day, both defendants moved to compel arbitration, arguing that because Primerica's broker-dealer affiliate and Osaic are both registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the dispute belongs in a FINRA arbitration forum rather than state court. After a December 11 hearing, the trial judge granted Primerica's motion, issuing the injunction and ordering the defendants to answer discovery on a fast track.
On appeal, the defendants argued the trial court should not have issued an injunction before deciding whether it had jurisdiction over Legacy or whether the case must be arbitrated. They also argued Primerica had an adequate remedy at law and that the expedited discovery order was improper.
The appeals court agreed the order fell short on the first point. It said the trial court's order analyzed the injunction factors in detail but made only a single brief reference to Legacy's jurisdictional challenge, which is ordinarily a threshold issue, and to the arbitration motion, which Georgia public policy favors. The judge had remarked at the hearing that the court had jurisdiction under the Georgia Long Arm Statute, but the written order never mentioned that statute, leaving the appellate judges unable to tell how it was applied. Citing Georgia Supreme Court guidance that a case may be remanded when an order lacks enough detail for meaningful review, the panel vacated the injunction and expedited discovery order. It directed the trial court to clarify why it denied Legacy's motion to dismiss and the joint motion to compel arbitration.
The panel did not reach the defendants' other arguments and said its opinion should not be read as ruling on the merits. It also said the decision does not prevent further appeals on the issues raised or any new ones that come up on remand.
The case now goes back to Gwinnett County, where the trial court must address jurisdiction and arbitration before deciding whether any injunction should be reissued. If the arbitration motion succeeds, Primerica's claims would move out of state court and into FINRA's dispute-resolution system.
Primerica, Inc., based in Duluth, Georgia, sells term life insurance, mutual funds, annuities and other financial products through independent licensed representatives in the United States and Canada. The company is scheduled to report third-quarter 2026 results on November 4.