Opinion ID: 2976451
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: an employee’s Years of Prior Service,

Text: Nos. 06-2540; 07-1172 Zirnhelt v. Mich. Consol. Gas Co. et al. Page 3 (b) each 12-month period, beginning after December 31, 1974 on an employee’s Anniversary Date, during which the employee shall have completed 1,000 or more Hours of Employment with one or more participating employers, associate companies and predecessor companies, and (c) a proportional Year of Service for any period of less than 12 months between December 31, 1974 and an employee’s first Anniversary Date thereafter, such proportional Year of Service to be determined under uniform rules adopted by the Committee in accordance with regulations, but excluding any Years of Service completed before an employee attains age 22. JA 489. Because Zirnhelt did not turn 22 until March 1969, she needed ten years of service from that date forward to qualify for pension benefits under the plan. Unfortunately for Zirnhelt, she worked just eight years and five months beyond that date—until August 1977—meaning that she did not have “ten (10) Years of Service at the date of [her] termination.” Because the benefits committee followed the language of the plan in denying Zirnhelt’s claim for benefits, its decision necessarily was not arbitrary and capricious. See McDonald v. W.-S. Life Ins. Co., 347 F.3d 161, 169 (6th Cir. 2003). That is all well and good, Zirnhelt responds, so long as the committee relied on the right version of the plan. But that is not the case, she claims: The company gave her a different copy of the plan, one that defined “Years of Service” as: The sum of (a) an employee’s Years of Prior Service, (b) each 12-month period, beginning after December 31, 1974 on an employee’s Anniversary Date, during which the employee shall have completed 1,000 or more Hours of Employment with one or more participating employers, associate companies and predecessor companies, and (c) a proportional Year of Service for any period of less than 12 months between December 31, 1974 and an employee’s first Anniversary Date thereafter, such proportional Year of Service to be determined under uniform rules adopted by the Committee in accordance with regulations, but excluding any Years of Service completed before an employee attains age 22. JA 29 (emphasis added). Unlike the company’s version of the plan, Zirnhelt’s copy of the plan places the age-22 clause within subsection (c) and, according to Zirnhelt, confines the limitation to that clause. The committee did not exceed its discretion in rejecting this argument and in relying on the company’s version of the plan. No one within the company could verify Zirnhelt’s version of the plan, and indeed, according to the committee, Zirnhelt’s version appeared to have been altered by someone outside the company. As the committee explained, Martha Klyce, the individual in the company’s benefits department who allegedly provided Zirnhelt with the copy in question, stated in her affidavit that “the copy of the Retirement Plan that [she] provided [Zirnhelt’s attorney] is not Nos. 06-2540; 07-1172 Zirnhelt v. Mich. Consol. Gas Co. et al. Page 4 the one attached to [Zirnhelt’s] Complaint” and that she did not recognize Zirnhelt’s version “as a document that has ever been used in the administration of the Retirement Plan.” JA 731. But even if we were to credit Zirnhelt’s version of the plan, that would not help her. The only difference between the competing versions of the plan is the placement of the age-22 clause, not its wording. Zirnhelt claims that the placement of the age-22 clause directly at the end of subsection (c), as opposed to on the next line of the page, means that it must apply only to that clause. While that is one possibility, it is not the only possibility. And the problem with Zirnhelt’s possibility is that it makes no identifiable sense. Subsection (c) permits employees to obtain credit for “proportional” years of service and gives the committee authority to create uniform rules for computing them. Why that subsection, and that subsection alone, would limit eligibility to full “Years of Service” earned after age 22 is never explained. Nor can we think of any tenable reason why the age-22 clause would apply only to this subsection, as opposed to all three of them. Nor for that matter could Zirnhelt—at least as evidenced by her appellate briefs and by her inability to give an explanation for this proposed construction of the plan at oral argument. Nor does ERISA provide any basis for drawing such a distinction. In 1977, ERISA provided that a plan, “[i]n computing the period of service under the plan for purposes of determining the nonforfeitable percentage” of benefits to which a participant is entitled, may “disregard[] years of service before age 22,” yet never said anything about applying such a restriction just to the calculation of proportional years of service. 29 U.S.C. § 1053(b)(1)(A) (1977), amended by Pub. L. No. 98-397, 98 Stat. 1426 (1984) (amending § 1053(b)(1)(A) “by striking out ‘22’ and inserting in lieu thereof ‘18’”). In challenging a benefits committee’s interpretation of pension plan language, a claimant does not gain traction simply by proposing another interpretation—any interpretation—of the plan. To be worthy of credence and to show material ambiguity in the language of a plan, the competing interpretation must be a plausible one—something Zirnhelt’s proposed interpretation is not. See McDonald, 347 F.3d at 169 (requiring an interpretation of a plan to be “rational” in order for a court to uphold a plan administrator’s acceptance of it); Wulf v. Quantum Chem. Corp., 26 F.3d 1368, 1376 (6th Cir. 1994) (explaining that “the language [of a plan] is ambiguous if it is subject to two reasonable interpretations”) (emphasis added); see also Smith v. ABS Indus., Inc., 890 F.2d 841, 847 n.1 (6th Cir. 1989) (“[B]oth parties have offered plausible interpretations of the agreement drawn from the contractual language itself [which] demonstrates that the provision is ambiguous.”) (emphasis added and alterations in original). Nor, it bears adding, does any of the extrinsic evidence introduced by either party support the distinction Zirnhelt proposes or provide any basis for drawing such a distinction. While Zirnhelt relies on extrinsic evidence, she does so to make a different argument—that the company never had an age-22 clause at all. She notes that a portion of the summary plan description of the pension plan contains a general discussion of pre-1975 eligibility requirements and yet does not say anything about an age-22 exclusion. That is true. But the benefits section of that same summary—the section entitled “Employee’s Rights if Employment is Terminated Prior to Qualifying for Early Retirement”—directly addresses Zirnhelt’s situation and supports the committee’s interpretation. “In the event an employee terminates employment prior to qualifying for early retirement,” it says, “he still has certain rights under the plan. Upon the completion of 10 years of service after age 22 such an employee may receive [certain pension benefits].” JA 578 (emphasis added). The most that can be said about Zirnhelt’s reliance on the summary plan description is that it perhaps introduces an ambiguity about the meaning of the summary. Under our precedent, however, ambiguity in a summary plan description cannot trump clear language in the plan. Indeed, Zirnhelt cites “no authority, and we have found none, where a plan summary which is merely ambiguous trumps unambiguous plan language.” Lake v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 73 F.3d 1372, 1379 (6th Cir. 1996); see also Foltice v. Guardsman Prods., Inc., 98 F.3d 933, 938 (6th Cir. 1996) (“[U]nder the law of this circuit, language in a plan summary that is merely ambiguous should not be permitted to trump unambiguous language in the plan itself . . . .”). Nos. 06-2540; 07-1172 Zirnhelt v. Mich. Consol. Gas Co. et al. Page 5 That conclusion makes particular sense here for an independent reason. One of Zirnhelt’s contentions is that she did not receive the summary plan description until after she filed her complaint in this case. That allegation undermines any suggestion that she reasonably relied on the same plan summary, as is required. See Edwards v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 851 F.2d 134, 136–37 (6th Cir. 1988) (holding that an unambiguous summary plan trumped an ambiguous plan because, among other reasons, the participant reasonably relied on the summary).