Milwaukee Brewery Workers' Pension Plan v. Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company and Stroh Brewery Company (513 U.S. 414)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 21, 1995 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 513 U.S. 414 · 115 S. Ct. 981
- Decided
- February 21, 1995
- Term
- October Term 1994
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. The Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980 (MPPAA), 94 Stat. 1208, 29 U. S. C. §§1381-1461, provides that an employer who withdraws from an underfunded multi-employer pension plan must pay a charge sufficient to cover that employer’s fair share of the plan’s unfunded liabilities. The statute permits the employer to pay that charge in lump sum or to “amortize” it, making payments over time. This case focuses upon a withdrawing employer who amortizes the charge, and it asks when, for purposes of calculating the amortization schedule, interest begins to accrue on the amortized charge. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that, for purposes of computation, interest begins to accrue on the first day of the year after withdrawal. We agree and affirm its judgment. I We shall briefly describe the general purpose of MPPAA, the basic way MPPAA works, and the relevant interest-related facts of the case before us. A MPPAA’s General Purpose MPPAA helps solve a problem that became apparent after Congress enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 829, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. ERISA helped assure private-sector workers that they would receive the pensions that their employers had promised them. See, e. g., Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal., Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension…
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