Employment – ERISA

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U.S. Supreme Court

Civil

Employment – ERISA

It was error to assume that retirement benefits in a CBA are intended to be vested rights.

The inferences applied in Yard-Man and its progeny do not represent ordinary principles of contract law. Yard-Man distorts the attempt to ascertain the intention of the parties by placing a thumb on the scale in favor of vested retiree benefits in all collective-bargaining agreements. Rather than relying on known customs and usages in a particular industry as proven by the parties, the Yard-Man court relied on its own suppositions about the intentions of parties negotiating retiree benefits. It then compounded the error by applying those suppositions indiscriminately across industries. Furthermore, the Sixth Circuit’s refusal to apply general durational clauses to provisions governing retiree benefits distorts an agreement’s text and conflicts with the principle that a written agreement is presumed to encompass the whole agreement of the parties.

733 F. 3d 589, vacated and remanded.

13-1010 M&G Polymers USA, LLC, v. Tackett

Thomas, J.; Ginsburg, J., concurring.

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