"I've never been served papers in my life"

Companies Sue Union Retirees to Cut Promised Health Benefits.
I get the sneaking suspicion that all this Republican talk about tort reform and bloodsucking trial lawyers doesn't apply to situations when companies file frivolous suits in order to improve earnings and screw their retirees.

When a deputy sheriff came to his door with a court summons, George Kneifel, a retiree in Union Mills, Ind., was mystified. His former employer was suing him.

The employer, beverage-can maker Rexam Inc., had agreed in labor contracts to provide retirees with health-care coverage. But now the company was asking a federal judge to rule that it could reduce or eliminate the benefit.

Many companies have already cut back company-paid health-care coverage for retirees from their salaried staffs. But until recently, employers generally were barred from touching unionized retirees' benefits because they are spelled out in labor contracts. Now, some are taking aggressive steps to pare those benefits as well, including going to court.

[snip]

They have little to lose by trying. Typically, as such legal cases drag on, the employers save money as some of the retirees, who have to pay growing portions of their health-care costs, forgo costly care, drop out of the plans or die. If companies lose in court, the worst that happens is they have to resume paying benefits. They don't face punitive damages or penalties. And they may not have to resume benefits for those retirees who dropped out of the health plans.

What's more, their earnings get a pop. That's because at the same time as they sue, employers typically announce reductions in the retirees' benefits. Doing so entitles them to lessen the liabilities carried on their books. Lower liabilities translate to higher earnings.

The retirees, by contrast, often find themselves in a bind -- unsure of their recourse and facing, as they age, the court system's typical long waits for legal resolution. The U.S. Labor Department is of little help. Retired workers "aren't our constituents anymore," says a spokeswoman for the department.

The article goes on to detail these companies' jurisdiction-shopping, and you'll notice that Minneapolis appears prominently as such a business-friendly legal environment, which actually surprised me for about 5 seconds. What a squalid mess. I have nothing but contempt for these executive fatcats, who seem to be able to discard every last shred of decency (not to mention dignity) in order to wantonly sue retirees who have not only bargained a contract in good faith, but given their lives and blood to the company. What we are seeing here is bad-faith litigious greed (cloaked, as usual, in rationality), and if Republicans support this behavior then they are amoral hypocrites of the first order.

Aside: how did the Wall Street Journal suddenly become the most entertaining lefty rag among major dailies?

[link via Triptych Cryptic]