Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 575

524US2

Unit: $U94

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530

EASTERN ENTERPRISES v. APFEL

Opinion of O(cid:146)Connor, J.

That liability is not, of course, a permanent physical occu-
pation of Eastern’s property of the kind that we have viewed
as a per se taking. See Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan
CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419, 441 (1982). But our decisions
upholding the MPPAA suggest that an employer’s statutory
liability for multiemployer plan beneﬁts should reﬂect some
“proportion[ality] to its experience with the plan.” Concrete
Pipe, 508 U. S., at 645 (internal quotation marks omitted);
see also Connolly, supra, at 225 (noting that employer’s lia-
bility under the MPPAA “directly depend[ed] on the rela-
tionship between the employer and the plan to which it had
made contributions”).
In Concrete Pipe and Connolly, the
employers had “voluntarily negotiated and maintained a pen-
sion plan which was determined to be within the strictures
of ERISA,” Concrete Pipe, supra, at 646 (internal quota-
tion marks omitted); Connolly, supra, at 227, and conse-
quently, the statutory liability was linked to the employers’
conduct.

Here, however, while Eastern contributed to the 1947 and
1950 W&R Funds, it ceased its coal mining operations in
1965 and neither participated in negotiations nor agreed to
make contributions in connection with the Beneﬁt Plans
under the 1974, 1978, or subsequent NBCWA’s.
It is the
latter agreements that ﬁrst suggest an industry commitment
to the funding of lifetime health beneﬁts for both retirees
and their family members. Although EACC continued min-
ing coal until 1987 as a subsidiary of Eastern, Eastern’s lia-
bility under the Act bears no relationship to its ownership of
EACC; the Act assigns Eastern responsibility for beneﬁts
relating to miners that Eastern itself, not EACC, employed,
while EACC would be assigned the responsibility for any
miners that it had employed. See 26 U. S. C. § 9706(a).
Thus, the Act does not purport, as Justice Breyer sug-
gests, post, at 566, to assign liability to Eastern based on the
“ ‘last man out’ problem” that developed after beneﬁts were
signiﬁcantly expanded in 1974. During the years in which