- Details
-
Published: Sunday, 02 July 2017 11:23
Updated January 28, 2020
After ten years of legal wrangling with both the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and U.S. Treasury during the discovery phase of our lawsuit, we finally learned what happened in 2009 when our pension plan was involuntarily terminated. We have data from the government and credible actuarial professionals that reveals our pension plan was better funded than the PBGC has publicly alleged.
On September 21, 2018, we filed our
Motion for Summary Judgment with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division. With case law and undisputed facts, we showed that the PBGC broke the law. The assets of our plan, which were seized by the PBGC in 2009 when the Dow was below 10,000, have grown considerably since then. There's more than enough money to pay everyone the pensions they earned.
Senior U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow held a hearing in Detroit on March 6, 2019, to discuss our motion, and the motion filed by the PBGC. Ours was more than 150 pages, accompanied by some 150 exhibits – over 800 pages in all. It detailed the most compelling evidence we’ve gathered – much of it from the government after several judges ordered it to do so. Our motion was also bolstered by considerable research of case law by our legal team. It asserted that there is no need for a trial because the preponderance of the evidence proves that the PBGC terminated our pension plan illegally.
Based on the strength of our evidence, we believed that the judge would have sufficient grounds to order the PBGC to restore our full pensions – retroactively. At the March 6 hearing, Judge Tarnow told the PBGC and DSRA attorneys that he would take under advisement the additional information he heard during the hearing. But only sixteen days later, on March 22, DSRA was profoundly disappointed when Judge Tarnow denied our Motion for Summary Judgment.
Still believing on the strength of our case — that both the law and the facts are on our side — we appealed to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on August 7, 2019. The three-judge panel assigned to our case heard oral arguments by both DSRA and PBGC attorneys on January 28, 2020. We look forward to the Court’s careful deliberation and ruling, which we expect in the coming months.
