BREAKING NEWS: Delphi retirees prevail against company’s attempt shut them out of PBGC suit
Published: Friday, July 24, 2009 4:08 PM EDT Following is a statement from the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association in response to Delphi’s July 24 attempt to have the retirees excluded from the suit filed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) to terminate the pension plan.
In the past few days, several things have happened that are critical to our on-going fight to protect our pensions. As you know, last week, we filed a lawsuit in federal court in Detroit, to stop the Plan fiduciaries -- Delphi's Executive Committee -- from agreeing with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to summarily terminate our pension plan. Our argument is that the fiduciaries determining how our Plan should be terminated -- if at all -- should be loyal to us, not Delphi. We believe that our lawsuit was a strong one -- so strong in fact that the PBGC yesterday entered the lawsuit in order to put the full weight of the federal government against us.
After our lawsuit was filed, however, the PBGC filed its own suit in Detroit to terminate the Plan. It did not file that lawsuit until this past Wednesday, July 22, and the PBGC provided no notice of the lawsuit to us.
Delphi then went to the bankruptcy court in New York (at three o'clock in the morning) to ask it to stop our Michigan lawsuit, which we had filed the week before. While we believe we had every right to bring our lawsuit when and how we did, and while that lawsuit was proceeding prior to the PBGC having filed its own lawsuit, the PBGC's lawsuit by statute takes precedence over ours. Under the applicable statutes and rules, the PBGC's lawsuit automatically becomes the exclusive means for challenging all Plan or termination matters. As a result, we agreed to the dismissal of our Michigan lawsuit. Again, the reason was that, once the PBGC files suit, its lawsuit becomes the proper place to raise issues about the propriety of any termination of our Plan. So, we dismissed our Michigan lawsuit, and stated in our dismissal order that we intend to intervene in the action the PBGC has filed in Detroit to protect fully our rights.
For Delphi, that wasn't enough. Delphi and its team of a dozen lawyers went back to the bankruptcy court this morning and asked the judge to order us not to challenge its negotiations with the PBGC, even if we did so in the lawsuit the PBGC itself has now filed in Detroit. Delphi and its team lost. The bankruptcy judge would not enter their order. Instead, he told us to return for permission to join the PBGC's lawsuit when we are ready to file our papers joining the PBGC's action in Michigan, so that he can ensure we do not upset any of the bankruptcy court's orders in Delphi's case. Next week, we will return to seek the bankruptcy court's permission to be heard in the PBGC's Michigan lawsuit.
While this may all seem complicated, the bottom line is this: despite the best efforts of Delphi and its massive legal team, our court battle to save our pensions continues. And it will do so on our terms, not Delphi's. It is clear that they do not want a court ever to hear our complaints about the improper way that Delphi has tried to terminate our Plan. But we are hopeful that the courts will eventually hear us, and when they do, we will prevail.
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