Retirees of former Hanford Site contractor Lockheed Martin Services Inc. have petitioned the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to hear their appeal of a U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision in a class action lawsuit against the Department of Energy.
In early February, a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the earlier dismissal of the lawsuit.
Plaintiffs want full pension benefits reinstated for up to 500 people who have worked at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The case was filed in 2016 by plaintiffs who had been employed by Lockheed Martin Services, which was formed to work at the nuclear cleanup site and other locations.
The appeals court panel agreed with the Court of Federal Claims decision in September 2017 that plaintiffs had not established that DOE entered into an implied contract with them to continue full pension benefits when the workers were transferred from other firms to Lockheed Martin Services as part of a largely failed local economic development plan established in 1996.
The petition for a rehearing filed, by plaintiffs’ attorney Douglas McKinley on Feb. 22, argues that DOE ordered a previous cleanup contractor, Westinghouse Hanford Co., to establish the Hanford Multi-Employer Pension Plan (MEPP) for Hanford contractors before the Westinghouse contract expired in 1996. Because the government authorized the contractor to establish the pension plan and controls which contractors are part of the plan, the government is bound to honor the plan, according to plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs argue that their case should be reheard by the full court because the issue requires an answer to an important, precedent-setting question: “When the government establishes an agreement between a government contractor and their employees that includes a provision giving the employees rights that are intended to survive the government’s termination of the contractor, if the government also holds the exclusive control over enforcement of the provision is the government thereby also bound to the provision?”
