Pete v. United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund of 1950

• Decision Date: 12 February 1975
• Docket Number: 73-1393 and 73-2197,Nos. 73-1270,s. 73-1270
• Citation: 517 F.2d 1275
• Parties: 88 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2720, 171 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 76 Lab.Cas. P 10,661, 1 Employee Benefits Ca 1239 Stephen PETE on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Appellees, Louis Belton et al., Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellees, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA WELFARE AND RETIREMENT FUND OF 1950 et al., Appellants. Slimp KISER, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, et al., v. Harry HUGE et al., and United Mine Workers of America Welfare and RetirementFund of 1950, Appellants. Slimp KISER, on behalf of himself and all other persons who have been deniedpension payments from the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and RetirementFund, et al., Appellants, v. W. A. BOYLE et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 1275

517 F.2d 1275

88 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2720, 171 U.S.App.D.C. 1,

76 Lab.Cas. P 10,661,

1 Employee Benefits Ca 1239

Stephen PETE on behalf of himself and all others similarly

situated, Appellees, Louis Belton et al., Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellees, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA WELFARE AND RETIREMENT FUND

OF 1950 et al., Appellants.

Slimp KISER, on behalf of himself and all others similarly

situated, et al., v. Harry HUGE et al., and United Mine Workers of America

Welfare and RetirementFund of 1950, Appellants.

Slimp KISER, on behalf of himself and all other persons who

have been deniedpension payments from the United

Mine Workers of America Welfare and RetirementFund, et al., Appellants, v. W. A. BOYLE et al.

Nos. 73-1270, 73-1393 and 73-2197.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Feb. 12, 1975.

Harry Huge and Fred M. Vinson, Jr., Washington, D. C., for appellants in all cases. Michael P. Bentzen, Joseph McFadden, Ian D. Lanoff, Monica Gallagher, Joseph A. Rafferty, Jr., Washington, D. C., and M. E. Boiarsky, Charleston, W. Va., were on the brief for appellants in Nos. 73-1270 and 73-1393. Walter P. O'Connell, Washington, D. C., also entered an appearance for appellants in No. 73-1270.

Louis Rabil, Washington, D. C., with whom Manfred J. Schmidt and Edward J. Gorman, Jr., Washington, D. C., were on the brief for appellees in No. 73-1270.

J. Michael Farrell, Washington, D. C., with whom Daniel L. O'Connor, Washington, D. C., was on the brief for appellees in No. 73-1393.

Julian H. Singman and Martin Shulman, Washington, D. C., were on the brief for intervenor/appellees Belton, Duvall and Lawson in No. 73-1270 and also entered appearances for appellants Adkins, Hensley and Madden in No. 73-2197.

Joseph A. Yablonski, Clarice R. Feldman, Washington, D. C., Lewis D. Sargentich, Cambridge, Mass., Daniel B. Edelman and Steven B. Jacobson, Washington, D. C., filed a brief on behalf of United Mine Workers of America as amicus curiae on the Matter of Attorneys' Fees.

Guy Farmer and William A. Gershuny, Washington, D. C., filed a brief on behalf of Bituminous Coal Operators' Association Inc. as amicus curiae in Nos. 73-1270 and 73-1393.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and WRIGHT, McGOWAN, TAMM, LEVENTHAL, ROBINSON, MacKINNON, ROBB and WILKEY, Circuit Judges, sitting en banc.

LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge:

These class actions are the latest, and hopefully the last, in a series of cases challenging the validity of the "signatory last employment" provision limiting eligibility for the flat retirement pension provided by the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund of 1950 (the Fund). ¹ Plaintiff classes consist of miners whose applications for retirement benefits were denied. The Pete class consists of coal miners who retired prior to February 1, 1965. Their applications were denied because they did not cease work in the coal industry immediately following some period of employment by a mine operator signatory to the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement. ² The Kiser class consists In separate district court proceedings, the plaintiff classes obtained summary judgments invalidating the pertinent signatory last employment requirements and ordering that the miners be placed on the pension rolls and paid retroactive benefits from the dates on which their pension applications were denied. ⁴ Appeals were taken and consolidated, and on August 5, 1974, a division of this court affirmed the invalidation of the signatory last requirements and the grant of prospective and retrospective pension benefits. The panel, with a dissent by Judge Edwards, affirmed the Kiser judgment giving relief to miners who had one year of signatory service at any time. ⁵ The division was unanimous in overturning the district courts' denials of interest on retroactive payments and in modifying the amounts awarded to attorneys for the plaintiff classes.

of coal miners who retired between February 1, 1965, and August 14, 1970. Their applications were denied because they did not cease work in the coal industry immediately following one year of employment by a signatory operator. ³

On October 2, 1974, the court granted rehearing en banc and informed counsel, through letter of its clerk, that the court "is particularly interested in the issues raised in the dissenting opinion of Circuit Judge Edwards." ⁶

In its present posture, the case is before the court in the context of a partial acquiescence by the Trustees, whereby all members of the Pete and Kiser classes who had more than five years' contributory employment have been enrolled as pensioners. ⁷ To that extent, there is no pending controversy and plaintiffs' actions have yielded relief.

The basic controversy remaining for resolution concerns the period of signatory service needed to qualify for a pension and the extent of and the inclusion of interest in the retroactive payments owed qualifying miners. With respect to matters pertaining to the award of fees to plaintiffs' attorneys, the opinions of the panel, written by Judge Wilkey, are reinstated. The pertinent portions of the panel opinions appear in the Appendix to this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

The origin of the Fund and its operation were succinctly sketched by Judge Wilkey in the Kiser panel opinion (slip opinion at 3) The Fund is an irrevocable trust established by the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1950 under the authority of section 302(c)(5) of the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947. It is administered by three Trustees: one selected by mine operators who have signed the Agreement (signatories), one designated by the United Mine Workers of America, and one neutral selected by the other two. Each signatory operator must pay into the Fund royalties based on the quantity of coal it produces. From the accumulated royalties and the income earned by investing the Fund's principal, the Trustees are charged with paying various benefits to employees of the coal operators, including medical and hospital costs, pensions, and compensation for work-related injuries and illnesses. Under the Agreement the Trustees have full authority to establish criteria with respect to eligibility for benefits. The pension plan adopted by the Trustees provides for flat monthly payments to all retired miners who meet applicable eligibility criteria. (Footnotes omitted.)

The eligibility requirements established by the Trustees have varied over the course of the Fund's existence. At the outset, Resolution No. 10, adopted on April 5, 1950, required that an applicant be at least 60 years of age at the time of application, have 20 years service in the coal industry with one year's employment immediately preceding retirement, and have permanently ceased work in the industry after May 28, 1946. ⁸ In early 1953, Resolutions Nos. 30 and 31 amended these criteria to require that the 20 years service have taken place within the 30 years immediately preceding the date of pension application. ⁹ Both the one year and the "20 out of 30" requirements were designed "to prevent large numbers of miners who had been long separated from the industry from establishing retirement after May 29, 1946 by returning for temporary employment of, say a few months or even weeks." ¹⁰

Although the "signatory last employment" requirement was not expressly set forth in a resolution until 1960, it was a feature of the Fund's administration at a much earlier date. This fact is not controverted; it appears in Roark v. Boyle (Roark II), 141 U.S.App.D.C. 390, 439 F.2d 497 (1970), is relied on by some of the Pete class plaintiffs and was conceded by the Trustees at oral argument. ¹¹ As to texts of the resolutions, we have Resolution No. 56, adopted April 11, 1960, as clarified by Resolution No. 57, September 27, 1960, requiring that an applicant have "(p)ermanently retired from and ceased work" in the coal industry "following regular This court's 1968 decision in Roark v. Lewis (Roark I) ¹⁵ considered a challenge to use of the signatory last provision of Resolutions Nos. 56 and 57 ¹⁶ to deny pension applications filed by three miners, with between 9 and 15 years' signatory service and between 29 and 42 years' employment in the coal industry. We concluded that the "applicants made out a prima facie case as to the requirement's unreasonableness" and remanded for a determination of whether there was a "rational nexus between the Fund's purpose and the requirement." ¹⁷

employment in a classified job . . . as an employee of an operator signatory to the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1950." ¹² The phrase "following regular employment" was administratively construed by the Trustees to mean "immediately following one year's signatory employment." ¹³ By Resolution No. 63 miners retiring subsequent to February 1, 1965, were given express notice of the one year's signatory last employment requirement. ¹⁴

On August 14, 1970, following the remand, we held in Roark II that although the bare signatory last employment requirement would have been reasonable in the early years of the Fund, it was arbitrary as to the plaintiffs who retired "at a time when significant contribution histories (were) broadly available." ¹⁸ Roark II stated that the validity of a signatory last employment provision requires a context "that conditions eligibility on a period of contributory employment that is of sufficiently significant duration to warrant eligibility for a flat pension" a duration of at least five years. ¹⁹ In Roark II and its progeny this court has repeatedly found the signatory last employment requirement inequitable when applied to exclude miners with substantial signatory service ranging from eight to more than sixteen years. ²⁰ We have no occasion to examine the particulars of each of these decisions since our resolution of this appeal is consistent with, though not dependent on, those prior cases.

In shaping relief in Roark II, we stated...