In Re: Sunnyside Coal Company

146 F.3d 1273
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedAugust 17, 1998
Docket97-1276
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 146 F.3d 1273 (In Re: Sunnyside Coal Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re: Sunnyside Coal Company, 146 F.3d 1273 (10th Cir. 1998).

Opinion

146 F.3d 1273

40 Collier Bankr.Cas.2d 732, 32 Bankr.Ct.Dec. 1040,
Bankr. L. Rep. P 77,733, 98 CJ C.A.R. 3769,
15 Colo. Bankr. Ct. Rep. 263

In re: SUNNYSIDE COAL COMPANY, Debtor,
UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA 1992 BENEFIT PLAN, through
its trustees, Michael M. Holland, Marty D. Hudson,
Thomas F. Connors and Robert T. Wallace, Appellees,
v.
Kenneth A. RUSHTON, Trustee of the Estate of Sunnyside Coal
Company, Appellant,
Westmoreland Coal Company, United Mine Workers Of America
Combined Benefit Fund, Amici Curiae.

No. 97-1276.

United States Court of Appeals,
Tenth Circuit.

July 9, 1998.
Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied Aug. 17, 1998.*

Kenneth L. Cannon II (Steven J. McCardell and Penrod W. Keith with him on the briefs), LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, L.L.P., Salt Lake City, Utah, for Appellant.

Jami Wintz McKeon (David W. Allen, Office of the General Counsel, UMWA Health & Retirement Funds, Washington, DC; Paul Green, Mooney, Green, Baker, Gibson & Saindon, P.C., Washington, DC; and Paul D. Rubner, Rubner & Kutner, P.C., Denver, CO, with her on the brief), Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellees.

Robert A. Greenfield, Lee R. Bogdanoff and Martin R. Barash, Stutman, Treister & Glatt Professional Corporation, Los Angeles, California, on the brief for Amicus Curiae Westmoreland Coal Company.

Gary M. Ford and Lincoln Weed, Groom and Nordberg, Chartered, Washington, DC; Paul D. Rubner, Rubner & Kutner, P.C., Denver, Colorado; and David W. Allen and Brian H. Benjet, Office of the General Counsel, UMWA Health & Retirement Funds, Washington, DC, on the brief for Amicus Curiae United Mine Workers of America Combined Benefit Fund.

Before PORFILIO, MCKAY, and BRORBY, Circuit Judges.

JOHN C. PORFILIO, Circuit Judge.

This appeal presents the question whether premiums assessed against a bankruptcy estate under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992, 26 U.S.C. §§ 9701-9722, are "tax[es] ... incurred by the estate," 11 U.S.C. § 503(b)(1)(B), entitled to administrative priority. We join the Second and Fourth Circuits in holding they are and affirm.1

I.

The factual background of this case resonates with those addressed in Adventure Resources, Inc. v. Holland, 137 F.3d 786, 793 (4th Cir.1998), and LTV Steel Co. v. Shalala (In re Chateaugay Corp.), 53 F.3d 478, 498 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 913, 116 S.Ct. 298, 133 L.Ed.2d 204 (1995), and hearkens the history of the enactment of the Coal Act. That history, as more comprehensively set forth in Chateaugay, was aptly summarized in a November 1990 report issued by the Advisory Commission on United Mine Workers of America Retiree Health Benefits (the Coal Commission). Key to the Coal Commission's findings was "[r]etired coal miners have legitimate expectations of health care benefits for life; that was the promise they received during their working lives and that is how they planned their retirement years. That commitment should be honored. But today those expectations and commitments are in jeopardy." Coal Commission Report: A Report to the Secretary of Labor and the American People ( Nov.1990), at 1, JA 393, 4905 [hereinafter, Report ], quoted in Chateaugay, 53 F.3d at 485.

This finding echoed five decades of labor unrest and economic turmoil in the coal industry beginning in 1946 when President Truman ordered the Secretary of the Interior to take over the nation's mines. Emerging from that crisis was "an unprecedented system for providing health and pension benefits to workers at the center of which stood two separate, industry-wide benefit funds," one, a retirement pension plan, and the other, a health benefits fund. 53 F.3d at 481. Successor wage agreements in 1950, 1971, 1974, and 1978 negotiated between the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and coal operator groups like the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) delinked pension benefits from nonpension benefits like health care, and continued to embody in explicit language the promise that miners with a certain number of years of service were "entitled to receive health benefits until death," and would be fully guaranteed the pension and health benefits of prior agreements. Id. at 482-83.

Despite these agreements, the 1980's ravaged retired miners' benefit plans as contributing mining companies either went out of business, "orphaning" their former employees, or were relieved of their responsibilities to contribute to prior benefit trusts. The depletion of funds resonated in the vacuum created by soaring health care costs. Documenting these deficits, the 1990 Coal Commission reported to Congress any new scheme to finance health care for retired miners must include: "[T]he imposition of a statutory obligation to contribute on current and past signatories, mechanisms to prevent future dumping of retiree health care obligations, authority to utilize excess pension assets and the implementation of state-of-the-art managed care and cost containment techniques." Report at 60, JA 464, quoted in Chateaugay, 53 F.3d at 485.

The resulting 1992 Coal Act, Pub.L. No. 102-486, 106 Stat. 2776, 3036-56 (codified at 26 U.S.C. §§ 9701-9722), targeted current and former signatory operators, defined as "a person which is or was a signatory to a coal wage agreement," § 9701(c)(1), and required them to pay benefits for their own retirees and to share in the cost of benefits to orphaned retirees.2 To that end, Congress established two new funds, the UMWA Combined Benefit Fund (the Combined Fund), which merged the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans, 26 U.S.C. § 9702(a), and the 1992 UMWA Benefit Plan (the 1992 Plan). To be eligible to receive health and death benefits from the Combined Fund, coal industry retirees actually had to be receiving benefits from the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Trusts as of July 20, 1992. 26 U.S.C. § 9703(f). The 1992 Plan covers employees who retired before September 30, 1994, and are not eligible for the Combined Fund. 26 U.S.C. § 9712(b)(1). Like the Combined Fund, the 1992 Fund is financed by a prefunding premium, an annual payment based on the estimated costs of future benefits to orphaned retirees, and a per beneficiary premium, monthly assessments to reimburse the UMWA for monthly payments made to coal industry retirees. While the obligation to pay premiums to the Combined Fund is limited to entities that are "in business," 26 U.S.C. § 9711(a), the 1992 Plan eliminated the phrase "in business" from the signatory's obligation under 26 U.S.C. § 9712(b)(2)(A).

Sunnyside Coal Company was a signatory operator under the terms of the Coal Act. On March 25, 1994, after ceasing coal mining operations at its Carbon County, Utah facility, it filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Although Sunnyside continued to pay health benefits for its prepetition retirees as required by § 9711(a), it sought bankruptcy court authority under 11 U.S.C.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

In Re Knudsen
389 B.R. 643 (N.D. Iowa, 2008)
In Re Whall
391 B.R. 1 (D. Massachusetts, 2008)
Callahan v. UMWA 1992 Plan (In Re Callahan)
304 B.R. 743 (W.D. Virginia, 2004)
In Re LTV Steel Company, Inc.
299 B.R. 863 (N.D. Ohio, 2003)
In Re LTV Steel Co., Inc.
264 B.R. 455 (N.D. Ohio, 2001)
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. v. Skeen
163 F.3d 1205 (Tenth Circuit, 1998)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
146 F.3d 1273, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-sunnyside-coal-company-ca10-1998.