Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-06-07096/USCOURTS-caDC-06-07096-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Robert L. Brubaker
Appellant
Margaret C. Hayes
Appellant
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
Appellee
Metropolitan Life Retirement Plan for United States Employees
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 15, 2007 Decided April 10, 2007 

No. 06-7096 

ROBERT BRUBAKER,

FOR HIMSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED AND

MARGARET C. HAYES, FOR HERSELF

AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED, 

APPELLANTS

v. 

METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY AND

METROPOLITAN LIFE RETIREMENT PLAN 

FOR UNITED STATES EMPLOYEES, 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 00cv02511) 

Joseph N. Kravec, Jr. argued the cause for appellants. 

With him on the briefs was William T. Payne. 

Emmett B. Lewis, III argued the cause for appellees. 

With him on the brief were Alan I. Horowitz, Anthony F. 

Shelley, and Laura G. Ferguson. 

USCA Case #06-7096 Document #1033772 Filed: 04/10/2007 Page 1 of 10
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Before: GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge, and EDWARDS and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: In November 1992 the 

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (“MetLife”) sent out a 

letter announcing a one-time supplemental payment of no less 

than $500 to MetLife “retirees” who “retired” prior to January 

1, 1988. By mistake, it also sent the letter to a number of 

former employees who had left MetLife before retirement. 

Plaintiffs are a former MetLife employee and the widow of 

another; neither former employee had retired from MetLife. 

Although apparently not recipients of the letter, plaintiffs 

brought suit under the Employment Retirement Income 

Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1001-1461, 

claiming entitlement to the benefit. Assuming arguendo that 

MetLife’s mailing the 1992 letter could have created such an 

obligation if its language had encompassed plaintiffs, we hold 

that the term “retired,” read in context of applicable pension 

plan documents, did not include such individuals. We 

therefore affirm the district court’s award of summary 

judgment for the defendants. 

* * * 

Since at least 1949, MetLife has offered an employee 

pension plan. See Insurance and Retirement Program for 

Agents in the United States, Mar. 1949, Joint Appendix 

(“J.A.”) 533-46 (“1949 Program”). MetLife’s 1949 Program 

provided a retirement annuity, group life insurance, and 

disability benefits and remained in effect until superseded in 

1976. The 1976 and subsequent revisions stated, however, 

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that the 1949 Program would continue to apply to employees 

“whose employment terminated on or before January 1, 

1976.” See 1976 Plan at 18 § 5.01, J.A. 2147; 1989 Plan at 28 

§ 5.01, J.A. 2176; 1994 Plan at 37 § 5.01, J.A. 2199; 2001 

Plan at 50 § 5.01, J.A. 2133. 

Under the 1949 Program an employee “continuing as a 

contributor [to the] Retirement Annuity until normal 

retirement date” was entitled to receive an annuity calculated 

under schedules laid out in the Program. 1949 Program at 13. 

(The Program made special provision for employees who 

“retired” earlier or later under carefully limited circumstances 

usually including the agreement of the company. Id. at 19-

20.) In addition, employees who “terminated” their MetLife 

agency prior to the normal retirement date (but not under the 

optional retirement arrangements) could enjoy benefits. If 

they had reached their 35th birthday and worked for MetLife 

for five years at the time of termination, they could elect to 

receive either a one-time cash payment or a “Paid-up Deferred 

Annuity payable at [the] normal retirement date.” Id. at 16. 

Plaintiff Robert L. Brubaker worked for MetLife from 

1953 until 1961, when he left the company and worked (for 

the next thirty-five years) for one of MetLife’s competitors. 

Plaintiff Margaret C. Hayes is the widow of Francis X. Hayes, 

who worked for MetLife for several decades until 1964 and 

then for the Government Printing Office until 1976. Under 

the 1949 Program, both Brubaker and Francis Hayes qualified 

and opted for “Paid-up Deferred Annuit[ies]” on termination 

of their employment at MetLife. See J.A. 1897, 1937-40. 

Thus, by the unequivocal usage of the 1949 Program, neither 

of them “retired.” 

MetLife’s November 18, 1992 letter announced “a special 

one-time pension payment . . . to all employees who retired 

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prior to January 1, 1988,” valued at the greater of $500 or $25 

for each year of “retirement plan service.” “Surviving 

spouses . . . who began receiving pension payments prior to 

January 1, 1988” would also get the payment. Letter from 

MetLife CEO Robert G. Schwartz to My Retired Metlife 

Associates and Spouses, Nov. 18, 1992, J.A. 2278-79. In 

January 1993, on discovery that the letter had been sent to 

some deferred annuitants, MetLife wrote to those individuals, 

stating that they weren’t eligible for the one-time payment. 

Letter from Vice-President James N. Heston to Former 

MetLife Employees with a Deferred Vested Annuity Benefit, 

Jan. 14, 1993, J.A. 2318. 

Several years later Brubaker wrote to MetLife, claiming 

entitlement to certain benefit enhancements, including the 

1992 one-time payment. (The other claims have been 

abandoned en route to this court.) MetLife’s plan 

administrator denied the claim on the ground that the increase 

“applie[d] only to eligible employees who had retired . . . 

directly from Company service,” not individuals such as 

Brubaker “whose termination of Company service occurred 

prior to retirement age, even though [such individuals] were 

entitled to retain a Deferred Annuity.” Letter from Jo 

Boudreau, Benefits Consultant, to Robert L. Brubaker, Apr. 

25, 2000, J.A. 1890. 

After several requests for reconsideration, Brubaker filed 

suit in district court in October 2000. He amended his 

complaint in January 2001 to add Margaret Hayes. The 

district court remanded Brubaker’s claim to the plan 

administrator for a complete review and development of the 

administrative record. The plan administrator again denied 

Brubaker’s claim. See Letter from James N. Heston, Senior 

Vice President and Plan Administrator, to Robert L. Brubaker, 

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Dec. 8, 2003, J.A. 2041-51. Following discovery, the district 

court granted summary judgment for defendants. 

* * * 

Brubaker and Hayes raise a number of objections on 

appeal, most of which are directed at the district court’s partial 

reliance on a 1991 MetLife Summary Plan Description 

(“SPD”), which that court read as explicitly excluding 

deferred annuitants from the category of “employees who 

retired” in the 1992 letter. But we hold that the plain terms of 

the 1992 letter and 1949 Program exclude deferred annuitants 

from the intended scope of the one-time payment. This 

analysis moots plaintiffs’ various objections about the district 

court’s reliance on language from the 1991 SPD. 

We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment 

de novo, and will affirm if, viewing all evidence in the light 

most favorable to the non-moving party, “there is no genuine 

issue as to any material fact and . . . the moving party is 

entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 

56(c); see also Allied Pilots Ass’n v. Pension Benefit 

Guarantee Corp., 334 F.3d 93, 97 (D.C. Cir. 2003). Both 

district and appellate courts interpret benefit plan documents 

de novo, “unless the terms of the plan ‘giv[e] the 

administrator or fiduciary discretionary authority to determine 

eligibility for benefits or to construe the terms of the plan.’” 

Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila, 542 U.S. 200, 210 (2004) 

(quoting Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S. 101, 

115 (1989)) (alteration in original). MetLife claims the plan 

here conferred such authority, but we need not reach that 

question because defendants are entitled to summary 

judgment even without such deference. 

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Brubaker and Francis Hayes both terminated their 

MetLife employment “on or before January 1, 1976,” and thus 

(as they concede) were covered by the 1949 Program. See 

Appellants’ Br. at 20 n.6; Reply Br. at 4-5; 1976 Plan at 18 

§ 5.01, J.A. 2147. Although the 1949 Program does not 

explicitly define the terms “retired,” “retiree,” or “retirement 

benefits,” it is absolutely unvarying in its usage, drawing a 

clear line between employees who “retired,” namely, those 

who left MetLife after fulfilling the Program’s criteria for 

retirement, and those, such as Brubaker and Francis Hayes, 

who “terminated” their employment prior to satisfying those 

requirements but became entitled to a Paid-up Deferred 

Annuity. 

First, the Program explicitly distinguishes between (1) 

retirement “under the Program” and (2) “termination of 

agency,” which “is deemed to occur” on an employee’s 

“discontinuance as an Agent, unless he is retired under the 

Program.” 1949 Program at 14, J.A. 541 (emphasis added). 

Upon “termination,” “all coverage under this Program 

automatically ceases,” except that an employee over age 35 

with five years’ annuity contributions may, on termination, 

choose to receive the annuity’s “cash surrender value” or a 

“Paid-up Deferred Annuity payable at normal retirement date 

. . . the annual rate being equal to that of the Retirement 

Annuity . . . in force immediately prior to termination of 

agency.” Id. at 16. Thus, the term “normal retirement date” 

has relevance not only for individuals “be[ing] retired” from 

MetLife, id. at 19, but also for deferred annuitants, as it 

controls the date their deferred payments begin. And the 

Program applies the phrase “retirement annuity” to the 

amounts due both to deferred annuitants and to individuals 

who qualify as “retired.” But so far as we can discover, the 

Program is resolute in confining the verb “retire,” the 

participles “retiring” and “retired,” and the gerund “retiring” 

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to employees who retire from MetLife at the normal 

retirement date (or at an earlier or later date meeting the stated 

criteria for retirement). 

For example, the Program lays out a number of 

prerequisites for “be[ing] retired” that reflect this distinction. 

It defines the “normal retirement date” as the first day of the 

month nearest to a man’s 65th birthday (60th for women), and 

states that, ordinarily, “each [employee] shall be retired on his 

normal retirement date.” 1949 Program at 13, 19, J.A. 540, 

543 (emphasis added). The “annual rate of Retirement 

Annuity” is defined with respect to an employee “continuing 

as a contributor for Retirement Annuity until normal 

retirement date”; such rates are “payable for retirements on or 

after normal retirement date.” Id. at 13. For an agent actively 

continuing until immediately before his normal retirement 

date, certain group life insurance arrangements become 

effective whether or not the employee “then retires.” Id. at 

10. The Program makes other explicit references to group life 

insurance for those “retiring” on or prior to their normal 

retirement date. Id. at 11. 

Moreover, the Program permits a contributor (with 

MetLife’s permission) to “continue as an active [employee]” 

after his normal retirement date “for an additional period not 

exceeding one year,” with further year-by-year extensions 

possible through the year of an employee’s 70th birthday 

(65th for women). Id. at 19. Similarly, “[b]y mutual consent” 

an employee “may retire at any date within the 10 years 

immediately preceding the normal retirement date.” Id.

(emphasis added); see also id. at 11 (describing Group Life 

insurance coverage applicable to employees “retiring prior to 

[their] normal retirement date”). Each of these provisions 

clearly encompasses employees who stop working for 

MetLife on their normal retirement date (or slightly earlier or 

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later, under limited conditions). In addition, an employee who 

has not exercised “the option of retiring” earlier than normal 

may under some circumstances arrange for a reduced 

retirement annuity in exchange for extended protection of a 

surviving spouse. Id. at 20. 

The 1949 Program runs for some 25 pages, so 

conceivably we may have missed a usage of some form of the 

verb “retire” to cover deferred annuitants. But at oral 

argument plaintiffs’ counsel could offer no example 

contradicting the pattern. See Oral Arg. at 4:49 (Q: “Can I 

summarize your position as being that nothing in the 1949 

Plan identifies the deferred annuitants as ‘retirees’ or as 

people who ‘retired’?” . . . A: “There’s nothing expressly that 

[includes them], but there’s nothing that excludes them either. 

. . . If your question is was there an express use of the word 

‘retired’ to describe deferred vesteds under the 1949 plan, the 

answer is simply no.”). 

In light of the consistent usage in the 1949 Program, the 

1992 letter’s statement that MetLife would provide the lump 

sum payment to “retirees” who “retired prior to January 1, 

1988” applies not at all to deferred annuitants. Where the 

terms of a contract are clear, that is the end of the matter; we 

need not look to extrinsic evidence or the parties’ subsequent 

practice. See Consolidated Gas Transmission Corp. v. FERC, 

771 F.2d 1536, 1544 (D.C. Cir. 1985) (“If a contract is not 

ambiguous, extrinsic evidence cannot be used as an aid to 

interpretation.”); see also Restatement (Second) of Trusts 

§ 164 cmt. e (1959). 

Thus we need not wrestle with such matters as plaintiffs’ 

claim that a 1994 version of MetLife’s retirement plan shows 

that MetLife viewed deferred annuitants as “retired” 

employees. See Appellants’ Br. at 40-47; Metropolitan Life 

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Retirement Plan for United States Employees, Jan. 1994, J.A. 

1024-1262. Apart from the fact that their briefs don’t point to 

a single usage in that document of “retiree,” “retire,” 

“retired,” or “retiring” that is inconsistent with the pattern of 

the 1949 Program, different usage in other documents 

wouldn’t undercut the clarity of the usage in the 1992 letter 

and the plan under which Brubaker and Francis Hayes 

acquired their rights. Nor, of course, would mixed-usage 

statements by MetLife officials on deposition (if there were 

such statements—we can find no examples), or evidence of 

MetLife’s occasional administrative miscoding of deferred 

vested annuitants, see Appellants’ Br. at 58-60, smudge the 

clarity of the pertinent documents. 

Suppose the 1992 letter had mistakenly used terms that 

appeared to encompass 1949 Program deferred annuitants 

among those to whom MetLife said it “will provide” the onetime benefit? Both sides seem to argue on the assumption that 

under those circumstances the letter would have created a 

legal obligation on the part of MetLife. We are not sure why 

they make that assumption, but under the circumstances we 

needn’t address the issue. 

Nor can appellants prevail by citing the contra 

proferentum canon—a rule “that ambiguities in an insurance 

contract should be construed against the insurer who drafted 

the contract.” United States ex rel. Dep’t of Labor v. 

Insurance Co. of North America, 131 F.3d 1037, 1043 n.11 

(D.C. Cir. 1997). Whatever its application to ERISA plan 

documents may be, a rule devised as a tiebreaker is of no 

relevance when the language in question is clear. 

* * * 

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For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district 

court is 

Affirmed.

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