1985—Extending an error it made two years earlier, the Sixth Circuit (in Policy v. Powell Pressed Steel Co.) distorts ordinary contract principles as it construes a collective bargaining agreement to confer lifetime health-insurance benefits on retirees. Never mind that the agreement contained a provision providing for the continuation of pension benefits, but not of health-insurance benefits, after the expiration of the agreement.
Thirty years later, the Supreme Court will finally put an end to the Sixth Circuit’s presumption (unique among the federal courts of appeals) that collective bargaining agreements confer on retirees a vested right to lifetime benefits. In M&G Polymers v. Tackett, the Court will rule unanimously that such a presumption is incompatible with ordinary principles of contract law.