Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 546

524US2

Unit: $U94

[09-11-00 13:26:39] PAGES PGT: OPLG

Cite as: 524 U. S. 498 (1998)

501

Syllabus

beneﬁts for retirees and their dependents. During the years that East-
ern employed miners, such beneﬁts were far less extensive than under
the 1974 NBCWA, were unvested, and were fully subject to alteration
or termination. To the extent that Eastern may be able to seek indem-
niﬁcation from EACC or Peabody under contractual arrangements that
might insure Eastern against liabilities arising out of its former coal
operations, that indemnity is neither enhanced nor supplanted by the
Coal Act and does not affect the availability of the declaratory relief
sought here. Respondents’ argument that the Coal Act moderates and
mitigates the economic impact by allocating some of Eastern’s former
employees to signatories of the 1978 NBCWA is unavailing. That East-
ern is not forced to bear the burden of lifetime beneﬁts for all of its
former employees does not mean that its liability is not a signiﬁcant
economic burden.

For similar reasons, the Coal Act substantially interferes with East-
ern’s reasonable investment-backed expectations.
It operates retroac-
tively, reaching back 30 to 50 years to impose liability based on Eastern’s
activities between 1946 and 1965. Retroactive legislation is generally
disfavored.
It presents problems of unfairness because it can deprive
citizens of legitimate expectations and upset settled transactions. Gen-
eral Motors Corp. v. Romein, 503 U. S. 181, 191. The distance into the
past that the Coal Act reaches back to impose liability on Eastern and
the magnitude of that liability raise substantial fairness questions. The
pre-1974 NBCWA’s do not demonstrate that there was an implicit indus-
trywide agreement to fund lifetime health beneﬁts at the time that
Eastern was involved in the coal industry. The 1947 and 1950 W&R
Funds, in which Eastern participated, operated on a pay-as-you-go basis
and the classes of beneﬁciaries were subject to the trustees’ discretion.
Not until 1974, when ERISA forced revisions to the 1950 W&R Fund
and when Eastern was no longer in the industry, could lifetime medical
beneﬁts have been viewed as promised. Thus, the Coal Act’s scheme
for allocating Combined Fund premiums is not calibrated either to East-
ern’s past actions or to any agreement by the company. Nor would the
Federal Government’s pattern of involvement in the coal industry have
given Eastern sufﬁcient notice that lifetime health beneﬁts might be
guaranteed to retirees several decades later. Eastern’s liability for
such beneﬁts also differs from coal operators’ responsibility under the
Black Lung Beneﬁts Act of 1972, which spread the cost of employment-
related disabilities to those who proﬁted from the fruits of the employ-
ees’ labor, Turner Elkhorn, supra, at 18. Finally, the nature of the
governmental action in this case is quite unusual in that Congress’ solu-
tion to the grave funding problem that it identiﬁed singles out certain
employers to bear a substantial burden, based on the employers’ conduct