WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed puzzled on Monday about why it was being asked to decide whether a chemical company could cut the health benefits of its retired workers.þþ“This is an important benefit and an expensive one,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. He would have expected, he said, that the issue would have been resolved in the company’s contract with the union.þþ“Why is it that in this collective bargaining agreement and apparently many others,” he asked, “there isn’t anything explicit one way or the other?”þþThe upshot of the contract’s failure to address the matter in so many words, Justice Antonin Scalia said, was that one side or the other would soon be unhappy.þþ“Both sides knew it was left unaddressed, so, you know, whoever loses deserves to lose for casting this upon us when it could have been said very clearly in the contract,” Justice Scalia said. “Such an important feature. So I hope we’ll get it right, but, you know, I can’t feel bad about it.”þþJustice Stephen G. Breyer responded that “the workers who discover they’ve been retired for five years and don’t have any health benefits might feel a little bad about it.”þþThe case, M&G Polymers USA v. Tackett, No. 13-1010, concerned a union contract at a chemical plant in Apple Grove, W.Va. Like many other collective bargaining agreements, it did not directly say whether health benefits for retirees would vest.þþThe United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled for the retirees, relying on its own 1983 decision, one that put a thumb on the scale in favor of vesting. The 1983 decision, known as Yard-Man, was disavowed by lawyers on both sides of Monday’s argument, and it did not seem popular with the justices, either.þþThat left the justices with the question of whether to return the case to the Sixth Circuit for reconsideration in light of ordinary contract principles or for the justices themselves to decide what the collective bargaining agreement meant.þþJustice Anthony M. Kennedy was the leading proponent of the first approach. He said it would not be appropriate for the Supreme Court to consider the case under a new standard in the first instance.þþBut other justices seemed ready to rule, and several seemed prepared to side with the retired workers. “There are all these indicia that vesting was intended,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.þþJustice Scalia seemed to agree. “It is a reasonable assumption, call it a presumption if you like, that any promise to pay those benefits continues after the termination of the union contract,” he said.þþJustice Elena Kagan, citing a friend-of-the-court brief, said about 60 percent of collective bargaining agreements say that health benefits for retirees do not go on indefinitely.þþ“Yours doesn’t do that,” Justice Kagan told Allyson N. Ho, a lawyer for the company. “So there we are. We’re left with this ambiguity, and you have some language and they have some language and some judge has to figure it out.”þþContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyþMs. Ho responded that the ambiguity worked in her client’s favor. “Normally we would expect to see the obligation on the party who wants the benefit to seek the clear language,” she said.þþJulia P. Clark, a lawyer for the retired workers, pointed to a provision of the contract that tied health benefits to pensions, saying it supported her position that the health benefits had vested as the pensions had.þþJustice Ginsburg seemed to find the point persuasive. “Doesn’t that sound like as long as they’re getting the pension, they will get health benefits?” she asked.þþMs. Clark said a second provision of the agreement, one that treated retirees and their surviving spouses differently, also supported her side. Under the contract, benefits for spouses terminated with death or remarriage.þþBut Ms. Ho said that distinction was helpful to her client. “They highlight the absence of such language in respect to the promise to retirees,” she said. “Ordinary contract interpretation would tell you, if a promise were made, that’s where it would have been made.”
Source: NY Times
