Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 580

524US2

Unit: $U94

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

535

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

whether or not the employers had agreed to ensure that ben-
eﬁts would be fully funded”); see also Landgraf, 511 U. S.,
at 265 (“Elementary considerations of fairness dictate that
individuals should have an opportunity to know what the law
is and to conform their conduct accordingly; settled expecta-
tions should not be lightly disrupted”).

Respondents and their amici curiae assert that the ex-
tent of retroactive liability is justiﬁed because there was
an implicit, industrywide agreement during the time that
Eastern was involved in the coal industry to fund lifetime
health beneﬁts for qualifying miners and their dependents.
That contention, however, is not supported by the pre-1974
NBCWA’s. No contrary conclusion can be drawn from the
few isolated statements of individuals involved in the coal
industry, see, e. g., Brief for Respondents Peabody Holding
Company, Inc., et al. 8–10, or from statements of Members
of Congress while considering legislative responses to the
issue of funding retiree beneﬁts. Moreover, even though
retirees received medical beneﬁts before 1974, and perhaps
developed a corresponding expectation that those beneﬁts
would continue, the Coal Act imposes liability respecting
a much broader range of beneﬁciaries.
In any event, the
question is not whether miners had an expectation of lifetime
beneﬁts, but whether Eastern should bear the cost of those
beneﬁts as to miners it employed before 1966.

Eastern only participated in the 1947 and 1950 W&R
Funds, which operated on a pay-as-you-go basis, and under
which the degree of beneﬁts and the classes of beneﬁciaries
were subject to the trustees’ discretion. Not until 1974,
when ERISA forced revisions to the 1950 W&R Fund, could
lifetime medical beneﬁts under the multiemployer agreement
have been viewed as promised. Eastern was no longer in
the industry when the evergreen and guarantee clauses of
the 1978 and subsequent NBCWA’s shifted the 1950 and 1974
Beneﬁt Plans from a deﬁned contribution framework to a
guarantee of deﬁned beneﬁts, at least for the life of the