Court Opinion

ID: 9560000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:40:35.533046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:57.694407
License: Public Domain

SUTTON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Applying the Yard-Man line of cases to these agreements, the district court concluded as a matter of law that the claimants’ healthcare benefits do not vest upon retirement. Applying the same cases to these agreements, the majority concludes as a matter of law that the claimants’ healthcare benefits do vest upon retirement. They are both partly right, which is *565why I would not rule as a matter of law for either party and which is why I respectfully concur in part and dissent in part.
My first objection to the majority’s approach is its treatment of the claimants as if the employee-benefit agreements covered them directly. That is not the case. The agreements bear on this case only because a separate memorandum of understanding incorporates them. And that memorandum independently limits any expectations claimants otherwise might have about their future healthcare benefits. As agreed to by the claimants, the memorandum says that, if certain other unions representing other BFGoodrich workers change their members’ retiree health benefits — in negotiations not involving the claimants’ union, no less — those changes immediately will alter the benefits of the soon-to-be retirees of the claimants’ union. See JA 646 (“[I]f during the term of this Agreement the Plan or Programs are changed for [the] majority [of BFGood-rich’s other production and maintenance employees], such changes shall be made effective on the same date they are made effective for [that] majority ... and remain in effect for the life of this Agreement.”). That means that, if these other unions and BFGoodrich amend their plans and eliminate (or curtail) retiree health benefits, the soon-to-be-retirees of the claimants’ union, even someone who planned to retire the next day and anticipated receiving health benefits for life, will be stuck with the change — at least until the next round of negotiations. That is not the kind of provision that naturally inspires a worker to believe his benefits are fixed for life.
The durational language in § 16.4 of the employee-benefit agreements likewise undercuts the claimants’ argument that their benefits are immutable for life as a matter of law. It says that, “[u]pon termination, this Agreement shall terminate in all respects except that the benefits provided by it shall be extended for ninety (90) days following such termination.” On its face, the agreement undermines any expectation that the healthcare benefits a worker happens to receive at retirement are the benefits he will receive throughout retirement.
Our cases, it is true, appear not to give any weight to “general” durational clauses in collective bargaining agreements when those clauses do “not specifically refer to the duration of benefits.” UAW v. Yard-Man, Inc., 716 F.2d 1476, 1482 (6th Cir.1983). In Yard-Man, we gave no weight to a durational clause providing that the CBA should remain in effect until a particular date because the clause did not “specifically refer to the duration of benefits.” Id. Similarly, in Maurer v. Joy Technologies, Inc., 212 F.3d 907 (6th Cir.2000), we concluded that provisions indicating that the CBA and certain other agreements shall terminate on a particular date were “general in nature” because they “only referred] to agreements between the parties, not to benefits created by the agreements.” Id. at 918 (emphasis added). But § 16.4 of the agreement does “specifically refer to the duration of benefits.” Indeed, this language satisfies even the suggestion in Yolton that the durational clause must refer to the “retiree benefits themselves.” Yolton v. El Paso Tenn. Pipeline Co., 435 F.3d 571, 581 (6th Cir.2006). Surely one type of benefits to which the clause could be referring is retiree benefits. If the majority means to say that a durational clause means nothing unless it says that “retiree health benefits” terminate (or may be terminated) at a given point, then it must be saying what our cases (including Yolton itself) have long disclaimed saying — that the Yard-Man inference creates a presumption in favor of vesting that may be countered only by a clear statement. See id. at 579. More on that later.
*566Nor do I believe that the tying language in § 12.7(k) of the agreement — -which says that “[e]mployees who retire and who are eligible under this Agreement for a pension ... shall receive the Major Medical Benefits described in this Paragraph 12.7” — compels the view that claimants have unalterable benefits for life. McCoy and Golden are not the holy grails claimants say they are because those cases (like Yolton) reviewed preliminary injunctions granted by the district court, not a district court’s resolution of summary-judgment motions. See McCoy v. Meridian Auto. Sys., Inc., 390 F.3d 417, 419 (6th Cir.2004); Golden v. Kelsey-Hayes Co., 73 F.3d 648, 651 (6th Cir.1996). At issue there was the abuse-of-discretion question whether the district court properly assessed plaintiffs’ likelihood of success and the balancing of equities caused by an immediate termination of healthcare benefits, not the de-novo question whether the plaintiffs should prevail as a matter of law. Nor do those cases indicate whether the agreements contained benefits-specific durational language, as in this case, or whether a memorandum of understanding between the union and company limited any expectations otherwise created by the agreements. While I agree with the majority that the district court should not have disregarded the tying language, I respectfully disagree with the majority that this language “leads inescapably to the conclusion that the district court erred in granting summary judgment for PolyOne.” No case, to my knowledge, holds that tying language alone suffices to permit retirees to fend off summary judgment — much less to mandate that the benefits vested as a matter of law.
That is particularly so here in view of the conspicuous inclusion of vesting language in the pension benefits section of the agreement and its conspicuous omission in the healthcare benefits section of the agreement. The pension section of the agreement says: “No Pension or other benefit granted prior to the time of [the] termination [of the Pension Plan] shall be reduced, suspended or discontinued except as specifically provided in this Pension Plan. In the event of termination or partial termination of this Pension Plan, the rights of the Employees to benefits accrued to the date of such termination, to the extent then funded, shall be nonforfeitable. ...” Now that is vesting language. Yet nothing like it appears in the healthcare benefits section of the agreement. If our cases are going to rely on similarities between pension benefits and healthcare benefits (such as similar eligibility dates) in determining what has vested, they should not ignore marked differences (such as different language about vesting) in making the same inquiry. Either they both are relevant to the vesting question, or neither is.
Although §§ 12.15(h) and 12.14 of the agreement provide some support for the retirees’ claim, they too do not establish unalterable benefits for life. Section 12.15(h), as the retirees emphasize, says that “a Special Medicare Benefit” will be paid to certain employees, pensioners and surviving spouses. But the retirees overlook the first sentence of that provision, which adds that those individuals will be provided with “a Special Medicare Benefit” only “if such Employee, Pensioner or surviving spouse is covered for Medical Benefits under this Article 12.” (emphasis added). Read together with the introductory language to Article 12-which says that the company will provide the benefits discussed in Article 12 “for the duration of this Agreement” — this provision does not unambiguously vest the retirees’ health benefits. The claimants’ reliance on § 12.14 suffers from a similar problem.
Even if I were to ignore all of this, I still do not know what has vested as a matter *567of law. Is it all retiree health benefits or just certain stated benefits? See Policy v. Powell Pressed Steel Co., 770 F.2d 609, 615 (6th Cir.1985) (“The court finds that this section unambiguously confers the stated health insurance benefits for the duration of the retiree’s life.”) (emphasis added). And if it is all retiree benefits, are there any limitations? “What if the employer reduces health benefits for active employees or increases the cost of those benefits to active employees? What if the employer increases some health benefits for active employees but reduces others? Must the retiree take the bitter with the sweet? Or is it a ratchet with only the improvements in health benefits available to the retiree but with no compulsion to take any reduction?” Prater v. Ohio Educ. Ass’n, 505 F.3d 437, 441 (6th Cir.2007). What happens if the medical insurance provider no longer offers the same medical benefits it offered for the term of the prior collective bargaining agreement? And what if the company’s business takes a turn for the worse? Must it continue paying the same benefits to retirees that they received at retirement, even if the cost of those benefits means laying off current workers (and eliminating their health benefits) and means potentially weakening the income stream that pays for retiree benefits? How long must this continue? Until all of the values that a company brings to a community but one — irreversible retiree health benefits — are gone?
While there is no reason to think the company is heading in this direction, I fail to see how we can hold that benefits have vested as a matter of law when we do not know what has vested and on what terms. In a case like this one — where the memorandum of understanding and durational language point in the company’s direction, the tying language (at least some of it) and §§ 12.14 and 12.15(h) point in the retirees’ direction and the extrinsic evidence points in both directions — I would prefer to leave these contractual ambiguities for resolution in the forum in which they belong: a jury.
One last point. The majority’s conclusion to the contrary suggests that the Yard-Man inference has become a rebut-table presumption — one that may be overcome only by a clear-statement reservation of rights. “[A]bsent specific durational language referring to retiree benefits themselves,” as the majority puts it, healthcare benefits vest as a matter of law.
The majority disclaims doing any such thing. “Yard-Man,” it says, “does not create a legal presumption that retiree benefits are interminable” but rather “is properly understood as creating an inference only if the context and other available evidence indicate an intent to vest.” We have said the same thing before. See, e.g., Yolton, 435 F.3d at 580 (“[U]nder Yard-Man, there is no legal presumption that benefits vest and ... the burden of proof rests on plaintiffs. This Court has never inferred an intent to vest benefits in the absence of either explicit contractual language or extrinsic evidence indicating such an intent.”) (internal quotation marks, citations and alterations omitted).
But other circuits and observers, looking at what we have said and done in applying the Yard-Man inference have called it a presumption. See, e.g., Rossetto v. Pabst Brewing Co., 217 F.3d 539, 543 (7th Cir.2000) (“One case [i.e., Yard-Man] holds that benefits are presumed to vest if they are conferred by a collective bargaining agreement----”) (emphasis added); UAW v. Skinner Engine Co., 188 F.3d 130, 140 (3d Cir.1999) (“We cannot agree with Yard-Man and its progeny that there exists a presumption of lifetime benefits in the context of employee welfare benefits.”) (emphasis added); Am. Fed’n of Grain *568Millers v. Int’l Multifoods Corp., 116 F.3d 976, 980 n. 3 (2d Cir.1997) (citing Yard-Man as a case that “apparently presumed] that retiree benefits are vested”) (emphasis added); Roger C. Siske et al., What’s New in Employee Benefits (ALI-ABA Course of Study, July 1-5, 2002), WL SH011 ALI-ABA 59, 322 (“The Sixth Circuit presumes vesting and requires a clear statement of termination to prove otherwise.”) (emphasis added).
I see their point. What started out as a potential inference became an omnipresent presumption and now appears to have become a clear-statement rule. Unless a company can point to explicit language in the relevant agreement stating that “retiree benefits” terminate at a particular date or do not vest, the benefits seem to vest as a matter of law. What we continually disclaim presuming we continually seem to presume.
In the majority’s defense, perhaps the problem is the ineffable nature of the inference. If we were writing on a clean slate, I could imagine three straightforward approaches to the problem. One: adopt the position of several circuits and create a presumption against vesting because a company’s unchangeable promise to pay healthcare benefits for life is a significant and unusual one — particularly when it arises from a three-year contract. See Bidlack v. Wheelabrator Corp., 993 F.2d 603, 606-07 (7th Cir.1993) (“No doubt a court should cast a cold eye on contentions that a contract with a fixed term actually created a perpetual obligation, and should, therefore, ... presume that a collective bargaining agreement ceases to obligate the employer when the agreement’s term (invariably three years) is up.”); see also Skinner, 188 F.3d at 139 (“[I]t must be remembered that to vest benefits is to render them forever unalterable. Because vesting of welfare plan benefits constitutes an extra-ERISA commitment, an employer’s commitment to vest such benefits is not to be inferred lightly and must be stated in clear and express language.”); Gable v. Sweetheart Cup Co., 35 F.3d 851, 855 (4th Cir.1994) (same); cf. Anderson v. Alpha Portland Indus., Inc., 836 F.2d 1512, 1517 (8th Cir.1988) (“disagree[ing] with Yard-Man to the extent that it recognizes an inference of an intent to vest” and suggesting that “there must be a specific, if not written, expression of the employer’s intent to be bound”) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Two: adopt the position no circuit has yet taken that there should be a presumption in favor of vesting because retirees who lose benefits often are not in a position either to return to work or to require their union to negotiate new benefits.
Three: do not adopt any presumption because these contracts should be interpreted no differently from other collectively bargained contracts. See generally Senior v. NSTAR Elec. & Gas Corp., 449 F.3d 206, 218 (1st Cir.2006) (applying the “traditional principles of labor contract interpretation” because, among other reasons, using a presumption or requiring “certain customary words” might “interfere with the correct interpretation ... of the understanding reached by the parties” and “Congress could easily have created interpretive presumptions by statute” but chose not to).
Yard-Man contemplates an in-between inference — not quite a presumption in favor of vesting but not quite a straight interpretive question either. Yet I wonder whether that slices things so finely that it places the rule beyond predictable and fair application — a little like adopting a standard of review between intermediate and strict scrutiny or a level of deference between Chevron and Skidmore.
*569Making this particularly puzzling is that we have adopted the opposite rule — a presumption against vesting — in the context of employment agreements that are not collectively bargained. See Sprague v. Gen. Motors Corp., 133 F.3d 388, 400 (6th Cir.1998) (en banc) (“To vest benefits is to render them forever unalterable. Because vesting of welfare plan benefits is not required by law, an employer’s commitment to vest such benefits is not to be inferred lightly; the intent to vest must be found in the plan documents and must be stated in clear and express language.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). One might have thought that we would apply the same rule in both settings or, if we were to put a thumb on just one of the scales, we would do so only where the employee did not have the benefit of a union negotiating the contract.
The salient point is that the inference, as this case well shows, has become a presumption. And we should either say that is what we are doing — and spare future panels, the district courts and litigants the confusion the inference has created — or abandon the inference altogether.