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524US2

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EASTERN ENTERPRISES v. APFEL

Breyer, J., dissenting

any other “reachback” ﬁrm). They are miners whose labor
beneﬁted Eastern when they were younger and healthier.
Insofar as working conditions created a risk of future health
problems for those miners, Eastern created those conditions.
And these factors help to distinguish Eastern from others
with respect to a later obligation to pay the health care costs
that inevitably arise in old age. See, e. g., 138 Cong. Rec.
34001 (1992) (Conference Report on Coal Act) (Coal Act
assigns liability to “those companies which employed the
retirees . .
. and thereby beneﬁtted from their services”);
Hearings on Provisions Relating to the Health Beneﬁts of
Retired Coal Miners before the House Committee on Ways
and Means, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 8–9, 32 (1993) (hereinafter
Hearings on Health Beneﬁts); House Committee on Ways and
Means, Financing UMWA Coal Miner “Orphan Retiree”
Health Beneﬁts, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 50–51 (Comm. Print
1993) (hereinafter House Report).

Congress has sometimes imposed liability, even “retro-
active” liability, designed to prevent degradation of a natural
resource, upon those who have used and beneﬁted from it.
See, e. g., Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compen-
sation, and Liability Act of 1980, 42 U. S. C. § 9601 et seq.
(1994 ed. and Supp. I). That analogy, while imperfect, calls
attention to the special tie between a ﬁrm and its former
employee, a human resource, that helps to explain the special
retroactive liability. That connection, while not by itself
justifying retroactive liability here, helps to distinguish a
ﬁrm like Eastern, which employed a miner but no longer
makes coal, from other funding sources, say, current coal pro-
ducers or coal consumers, who now make or use coal but who
have never employed that miner or beneﬁted from his work.
More importantly, the record demonstrates that Eastern,
before 1965, contributed to the making of an important
“promise” to the miners. That “promise,” even if not con-
tractually enforceable, led the miners to “develo[p]” a rea-
sonable “expectation” that they would continue to receive