[00:00:02] Speaker 00: Case number 14-5181, U.S. [00:00:05] Speaker 00: Airline Pilots Association Appellate vs. Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. [00:00:10] Speaker 00: Mr. Killian for the appellate, Ms. [00:00:11] Speaker 00: Collingway for the appellate. [00:00:46] Speaker 05: You might want to wait a second while your friends are getting ready. [00:01:03] Speaker 03: Good morning, Your Honors. [00:01:04] Speaker 03: You may please the Court. [00:01:05] Speaker 03: I'm Brian Killian on behalf of the USAPA. [00:01:07] Speaker 03: I'd like to reserve four minutes of time for rebuttal. [00:01:10] Speaker 03: The District Court's conclusion in this case that PBGC fulfilled its duties to the pilot's plan is wrong as a matter of law. [00:01:16] Speaker 03: The District Court misconceived the nature and the extent of the duties, fiduciary and statutory duties, that PBGC owed to the plan. [00:01:23] Speaker 03: In particular, the duty to investigate a potential cause of action when the statutory trustee has notice of it. [00:01:29] Speaker 03: The rule, Your Honors, we ask for is this. [00:01:32] Speaker 03: Whenever a statutory trustee knows or has reason to know about harm that the plan's former fiduciaries and actuaries caused to the plan, then he must investigate whether those fiduciaries and actuaries are liable to the plan and then must value that cause of action among the plan's assets. [00:01:49] Speaker 03: This case involved the dramatic pension plan failure. [00:01:52] Speaker 03: The pilot's plan. [00:01:53] Speaker 05: Can I ask you, I don't think any of the parties raised this question, but I want to ask you, under Heckler, is Heckler, is that a jurisdictional question for us about whether we have any power to review the PBGC decision here because it was committed to agency discretion? [00:02:11] Speaker 03: Sure. [00:02:12] Speaker 03: I don't believe that it is a jurisdictional question. [00:02:14] Speaker 03: Why not? [00:02:14] Speaker 05: If it was under APA, it would clearly be jurisdictional. [00:02:17] Speaker 05: There's lots of authority out there that says it [00:02:20] Speaker 03: The standard of Heckler is that there must be a meaningful standard provided in the statute, some sort of standard that Congress gave the Court that it can and is capable of applying. [00:02:31] Speaker 03: We believe that the Court then can look to the statute here and find that there are standards in the statute [00:02:36] Speaker 03: that the court is capable of applying. [00:02:38] Speaker 03: As part of our cause of action, I think it would form a defense for the president. [00:02:41] Speaker 05: My question is whether it's a jurisdictional threshold question that we need to consider, not what the resolution of it would be. [00:02:48] Speaker 03: I understand. [00:02:48] Speaker 05: I'm just wondering, the nature of it, you don't think it's jurisdictional? [00:02:51] Speaker 03: I don't believe it is, Your Honor. [00:02:53] Speaker 03: If you'd like, I could address the heck of a point now, that Congress did provide meaningful standards that this Court is capable of applying. [00:03:01] Speaker 03: It did provide specific duties, the duty to investigate, the duty of prudence, care, and loyalty, and the duty to collect and gather all of the plan's assets. [00:03:12] Speaker 03: those duties in the statute are all preceded by the word shall. [00:03:16] Speaker 03: And as this court said in the Cook v. FDA case, when Congress writes the statute in that way and makes the standard mandatory, it overcomes the heckler presumption. [00:03:25] Speaker 03: In addition, this case doesn't even involve conduct, challenge it to conduct that PBC took [00:03:30] Speaker 03: as an administrative agency. [00:03:32] Speaker 05: You're the statutory trustee here. [00:03:33] Speaker 03: That's correct. [00:03:34] Speaker 03: It's his role as statutory trustee. [00:03:36] Speaker 03: PBGC volunteered for that role. [00:03:38] Speaker 03: Congress did not require that PBGC become statutory trustee. [00:03:42] Speaker 03: And when it did so, it became subject to those duties. [00:03:45] Speaker 03: It knew that those duties would apply as they apply to all other statutory trustees. [00:03:49] Speaker 03: Congress also gave PVGC power to conduct the investigation as statutory trustee, but in the 10 years since this plan failed, PVGC did not provide a value for any of the plan's causes of action. [00:04:02] Speaker 03: It admits that, and it admits it never even looked for those. [00:04:05] Speaker 03: But PVGC can't contend that it didn't have notice of the potential causes of action against fiduciaries and actuaries because it told the bankruptcy court in the termination proceeding [00:04:15] Speaker 03: about those potential claims. [00:04:17] Speaker 03: In particular, PBGC told the bankruptcy court that the plan's investment strategy from before the termination exposed plan assets to too much risk. [00:04:26] Speaker 03: PBGC's expert calculated that there was a 50% chance of failure, which we believe is potentially imprudent in a breach of the fiduciary duties, and PBGC said as much in its brief to the court. [00:04:38] Speaker 03: I'll just read one sentence briefly. [00:04:40] Speaker 03: PBGC wrote, [00:04:41] Speaker 03: This so-called prudent investor approach is precisely the type of strategy that failed miserably for U.S. [00:04:47] Speaker 03: Airways and was largely responsible for the company's unaffordable pension costs that led to the termination of the pilot's plan. [00:04:54] Speaker 03: PVGC had similarly harsh things to say about the actuarial assumptions that the plan had been using before termination as well. [00:05:01] Speaker 03: In its own words, to the bankruptcy court, it called the assumptions unrealistic, unreasonable, and inappropriate. [00:05:05] Speaker 05: Isn't the fact that they were made to the bankruptcy court mean something here? [00:05:10] Speaker 05: different place, different standard, different circumstances? [00:05:13] Speaker 03: I certainly recognize that the specific context in which PBGC was raising these issues in the bankruptcy court was different. [00:05:21] Speaker 03: PBGC was asserting a claim against the plan's sponsor to cover the shortfall between the plan's liabilities and assets on a termination basis. [00:05:30] Speaker 03: But PBGC did not limit itself in rebutting the other side's arguments to simply arguing why on a prospective basis [00:05:37] Speaker 03: actuarial assumptions that were the same that had been in use before termination were inappropriate. [00:05:42] Speaker 03: PBDC further said and directly criticized the plan's use of those actuarial assumptions and the investment strategy that had been in place beforehand. [00:05:51] Speaker 03: And in our view, when a reasonable person who identifies specific conduct like that, which can cause harm and which the third party can under law be liable for, that they must investigate deeper. [00:06:03] Speaker 03: That is the duty essentially that the law imposes on all plaintiffs [00:06:06] Speaker 03: when they have actual or inquiry notice of a potential cause of action. [00:06:11] Speaker 03: the statute of limitations begins to run when they know or have reason to know that someone else has caused them harm or taken some conduct that could potentially cause them harm. [00:06:20] Speaker 03: Congress imposed essentially that same duty of inquiry on the statutory trustee because the statutory trustee is one step removed from the cause of action because the statutory trustee doesn't bear the risk if the statute of limitations expires. [00:06:34] Speaker 03: So an affirmative obligation was placed on statutory trustees [00:06:37] Speaker 03: And it's essentially the same one that applies to all plaintiffs. [00:06:40] Speaker 05: You use the phrase red flag. [00:06:42] Speaker 05: Normally, when you think of a red flag, you think of something out of the ordinary. [00:06:47] Speaker 05: But weren't the actual assumptions they used being used by many others at the time? [00:06:52] Speaker 03: They were, Your Honor. [00:06:52] Speaker 03: Red flag, I think, is shorthand for the know or have reason to know about a potential cause of action. [00:06:58] Speaker 03: Now, the district court found that the actuarial assumptions that the plan had been using and the investment strategy were similar to those that were used by other plans. [00:07:07] Speaker 03: And ignoring what PBGC told the bankruptcy court said, for that reason alone, PBGC didn't have to investigate further. [00:07:14] Speaker 03: We believe that that was wrong for two principal reasons. [00:07:17] Speaker 03: The idea is that just because everybody's doing it doesn't make it right. [00:07:20] Speaker 03: everybody could be doing the wrong thing. [00:07:23] Speaker 03: And in this case, PBGC has long taught that appropriateness of actuarial assumptions and prudence of investment strategy are plan-specific, so that what is appropriate and prudent for one plan. [00:07:36] Speaker 04: So what were the two assumptions? [00:07:38] Speaker 03: The two assumptions were the retirement age of pilots. [00:07:42] Speaker 03: The plan had been assuming that all pilots would retire at the age of 60, which is the legal maximum. [00:07:47] Speaker 03: And in fact, the plan had been seeing retirement somewhere between the age of 56 and 58. [00:07:54] Speaker 03: And changing that retirement age assumption by two to four years could have a substantial swing on the value of the termination basis of this. [00:08:04] Speaker 04: The mandatory retirement age is 60. [00:08:06] Speaker 03: Correct. [00:08:07] Speaker 03: And pilots, on average, were retiring before they hit the mandatory retirement age. [00:08:12] Speaker 03: The actual experience of the plan was different than the assumptions that the actuaries had been using. [00:08:17] Speaker 03: The effect is on the order of about $400 million. [00:08:20] Speaker 04: Are these all commercial airline pilots? [00:08:23] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:08:24] Speaker 04: And for passenger-carried planes? [00:08:27] Speaker 03: I believe that's correct, yes. [00:08:28] Speaker 04: The 60 doesn't apply to a Federal Express, does it? [00:08:32] Speaker 03: I don't know the answer to that question. [00:08:33] Speaker 04: It doesn't apply to private jets? [00:08:35] Speaker 03: I don't know the answer to that, Your Honor. [00:08:38] Speaker 04: I do believe that there was... Actually, we've got some cases on that. [00:08:41] Speaker 03: So the other assumption was... Was the expected rate of return. [00:08:45] Speaker 03: For most years, the plan was assuming a rate of return of 9.5%. [00:08:48] Speaker 04: Do you know what the average rate of return for the standard and poorest 500 is for the last 20 years? [00:08:58] Speaker 03: Not off the top of my head, Your Honor. [00:08:59] Speaker 04: It's 11.6%. [00:09:02] Speaker 04: So that was a red flag because they were assuming 8% return. [00:09:06] Speaker 03: The problem, Your Honor, was that the plan was in a position where it could not, was potentially in a position. [00:09:14] Speaker 03: I mean, our point, I just want to clarify, is that because the investigation wasn't done, we don't know whether there is, in fact, liability here. [00:09:21] Speaker 03: But the plan was in a position where its sponsor was not able to cover shortfalls. [00:09:26] Speaker 03: So, ordinary exposure to market risk may very well be prudent for a plan, say, as PVGC's expert told the Bankers' Report, a plan like General Electric. [00:09:35] Speaker 03: where you know that the plan's sponsor is well-capitalized and able to cover shortfalls in the event that ordinary market risk causes great losses for the plan. [00:09:46] Speaker 04: But in this case... What was the plan invested in? [00:09:49] Speaker 03: A wide range of investments, from public securities to creative investments in partnerships and the like. [00:09:57] Speaker 03: It was a broad array. [00:09:58] Speaker 03: There were billions of dollars of investments, Your Honor. [00:10:03] Speaker 03: So, our point is not necessarily that the PVGC would have to investigate every plan that had a nine and a half percent rate of return. [00:10:13] Speaker 03: But when PBGC itself told the bankruptcy court that that investment strategy was what partially caused the termination of the plan, the failure of the plan, PBGC can't then become statutory trustee and not investigate it further. [00:10:29] Speaker 03: A simple investigation into the potential liability of the fiduciaries and actuaries who set on that investment strategy and then who adopted the actuarial assumptions derived from that investment strategy is at least in order. [00:10:40] Speaker 03: Now, PBGC contends that to do that sort of investigation would consume substantial amount of resources. [00:10:47] Speaker 03: We have two responses to that. [00:10:48] Speaker 03: First, PBGC, in addition to having the duty to investigate, also has a duty of loyalty, and it cannot put its own interests and concerns about expending resources above the beneficiary's interests. [00:11:00] Speaker 03: But in all events, we believe that PBGC has effectively conceded that this sort of investigation is not particularly onerous. [00:11:08] Speaker 03: After PBGC's inspector general published the two reports that we've included in the joint appendix that called out PBGC for failing to do complete investigations of plan assets, PBGC apologized and designed new procedures. [00:11:25] Speaker 03: At the time of the trial in this case, those procedures, I believe, were still being designed [00:11:29] Speaker 03: And it's a testimony of pages 498 and 506 of the Joint Appendix. [00:11:34] Speaker 03: So we don't know actually whether or not these procedures are or will be effective, but the point remains that PBGC's commitment to undertake these investigations going forward demonstrates that it is not exceptionally onerous for the agency to do these investigations as a general matter. [00:11:58] Speaker 03: One other error of the district court I'll mention before I sit down and let the other side come up is that the district court, in considering the scope of the investigation that PBGC should have undertaken here, assumed only that PBGC would need to investigate the plan sponsor for the investment strategy and for the actuarial assumptions. [00:12:16] Speaker 03: But in fact, fiduciaries and actuaries can be liable as well. [00:12:20] Speaker 03: So the district court's assessment of this was on its face incomplete. [00:12:25] Speaker 03: And as PBGC admitted to the court below, it never looked into the fiduciaries or the actuaries for what they did in connection with investment strategy and actuarial assumptions. [00:12:36] Speaker 03: I'll reserve the remainder of my time. [00:12:37] Speaker 05: Thank you very much. [00:12:42] Speaker 05: Good morning. [00:12:42] Speaker 01: Good morning. [00:12:43] Speaker 01: May it please the court, Paula Connolly for the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. [00:12:48] Speaker 01: USAPA told the court that this appeal is about whether there was credible evidence of potential wrongdoing by US Airways before this pension plan terminated. [00:12:57] Speaker 01: PBGC agrees. [00:12:58] Speaker 01: The district court held a trial on that question, whether there was credible evidence of potential wrongdoing, and found that there was not. [00:13:06] Speaker 01: This was a finding of fact, subject to the clearly erroneous standard, and it was not clearly erroneous. [00:13:12] Speaker 01: The essence of this suit is that PBGC committed a breach by not looking for a breach, but USAPA spent nearly three years looking for a breach and didn't identify a single actual claim. [00:13:24] Speaker 01: What USAPA really wants, and it said that in its brief, is for PBGC to value [00:13:30] Speaker 01: these hypothetical potential claims for millions of dollars and then, quote, cover the value of those claims, unquote, with PBGC insurance. [00:13:39] Speaker 01: But it doesn't work that way, because value has to include collectability. [00:13:44] Speaker 01: And there hasn't been a single actual claim, much less a source of collecting those claims, identified in this case. [00:13:52] Speaker 05: It seems to me a lot of your opponents' arguments come from representations and arguments that PBGC made to the Bankruptcy Court. [00:14:01] Speaker 05: Would you deal with that issue? [00:14:02] Speaker 01: Yes, Your Honor. [00:14:03] Speaker 01: Late in this case, USAPA came upon arguments that PBGC made to the Bankruptcy Court. [00:14:08] Speaker 01: This was a trial about the value of PBGC's bankruptcy claim for the underfunding in the terminated U.S. [00:14:14] Speaker 01: Airways plan. [00:14:15] Speaker 01: Now the value of underfunding in a terminated plan is determined very differently than the value of underfunding in an ongoing plan. [00:14:23] Speaker 01: ERISA says that PBGC's regulation governs the assumptions for calculating underfunding in a terminated plan. [00:14:30] Speaker 01: What US Airways was arguing in the Bankruptcy Court was that one of PBGC's regulatory assumptions for discount rate could be plucked out of its regulation and substituted with a so-called prudent investor rate. [00:14:42] Speaker 01: That caused the parties to make all kinds of arguments about what was prudent. [00:14:46] Speaker 01: And I will admit that PBGC energetically defended its bankruptcy claim and how it should be calculated. [00:14:53] Speaker 01: But PBGC never suggested that there was an actionable fiduciary breach, an action against actuaries for professional malpractice. [00:15:01] Speaker 01: In fact, PBGC told the Bankruptcy Court that there's a difference between an ongoing plan and a terminated plan. [00:15:07] Speaker 01: And I'll quote from the Bankruptcy Court opinion, PBGC told the Bankruptcy Court that, quote, the administrator of an ongoing plan [00:15:15] Speaker 01: would breach no duty by investing in such an asset pool, the asset pool that was at issue there, and assuming an 8% long-term rate of return. [00:15:23] Speaker 01: So we think that that's a completely different scenario, and PBTC never suggested that there was an actionable fiduciary breach. [00:15:30] Speaker 01: Just addressing real quickly the actuarial assumptions, USAPA never mentioned these to PPTC, didn't bring it up in its letters, wasn't raised in its complaint. [00:15:40] Speaker 01: This is probably because choosing actuarial assumptions is not a fiduciary function. [00:15:45] Speaker 01: Actuarial assumptions are chosen by actuaries who are subject to ethical standards, professional standards, just like attorneys are. [00:15:54] Speaker 01: The law that applies [00:15:57] Speaker 01: is not that they can't be unrealistic, inaccurate, unfounded, the kinds of adjectives that you're seeing in these briefs. [00:16:03] Speaker 01: Instead, actuaries have to use their best estimate of anticipated experience under the plan. [00:16:09] Speaker 01: And together with other assumptions, they need to be reasonable in the aggregate. [00:16:14] Speaker 01: There's no evidence that that wasn't met here. [00:16:16] Speaker 01: In fact, Giuseppe put on no actuarial testimony at all. [00:16:19] Speaker 01: There wasn't an actuarial expert report. [00:16:21] Speaker 01: There wasn't an actuary on the stand, as PBGC did put on. [00:16:25] Speaker 01: Its only expert witness was an auditor, and he specifically said he wasn't asserting that any actuarial assumptions were unrealistic. [00:16:32] Speaker 01: USAPA also didn't cite a single case holding an actuary liable for malpractice regarding assumptions chosen. [00:16:41] Speaker 01: Addressing investment strategy, Department of Labor, the agency that prosecutes fiduciary breaches and ongoing pension plans, investigated this very plan for this very reason in 2004. [00:16:53] Speaker 01: And the Department of Labor's report on that is in the Joint Appendix. [00:16:57] Speaker 01: The Department of Labor used the benchmarks in the plan, found that the investments met the investment policy, that they were diversified, they were balanced. [00:17:08] Speaker 01: PBGC proved even more at trial that these investments performed better than the market, that the funded status of the plan was better than similar airline pension plans. [00:17:18] Speaker 01: And USAPA's expert testified, quote, I did not assess the reasonableness of the plan's investment decisions. [00:17:25] Speaker 01: I'm just addressing briefly other grounds that this court can affirm under Heckler v. Cheney. [00:17:31] Speaker 01: An agency's decisions not to investigate are presumptively unrevealed. [00:17:35] Speaker 01: It's a different role here. [00:17:36] Speaker 04: The average retirement age. [00:17:38] Speaker 01: The average retirement age, what in the bankruptcy court, Your Honor, PBGC was arguing that its regulatory assumption for expected retirement age, that is an assumption that's in its regulation applied. [00:17:53] Speaker 01: And to the extent it addressed [00:17:55] Speaker 01: expected retirement age at all. [00:17:56] Speaker 01: It was based on hindsight evidence for a very short span of time, perhaps ill-advised. [00:18:01] Speaker 01: I mean, actuaries do not change a plan's long-range expected retirement age assumption based on short period of time. [00:18:08] Speaker 01: And there was an early retirement window in effect at that time that affected when people were actually retiring. [00:18:15] Speaker 01: Just to turn briefly to Heckler v. Cheney, the Supreme Court held that the presumption applies to refusal to investigate. [00:18:23] Speaker 02: But this seems like the government in a different role here than the agency in a different role here than the classic law enforcement model where the government's exercising investigative or prosecutorial discretion. [00:18:36] Speaker 02: Your Honor, we would argue that... It would be a stretch or it would be something new to take Heckler, I think, to this area. [00:18:43] Speaker 01: Your Honor, we would say that the agency is the agency. [00:18:46] Speaker 01: We perform a wide variety of functions, and they overlap, they intertwine. [00:18:51] Speaker 01: We often sue the same company in the same lawsuit for fiduciary breach and termination liability. [00:18:58] Speaker 05: Under Yousafi's theory, we'd be acting in one role for part of that lawsuit, and another role for... If someone else had been appointed the statutory trustee, would they get the benefit of your reading of Heckler? [00:19:09] Speaker 05: No, Your Honor, that applies to government agencies because they have to balance their... But it applies to, you're saying applies to government agencies in all their activities, even when they're acting as a statutory trustee? [00:19:22] Speaker 01: Well, we would say that that distinction doesn't make sense here because the agency has a wide variety of functions and they overlap each other and intertwine. [00:19:33] Speaker 01: So there isn't a way to parse them out and neatly label them and separate them, as you said, but tries to do here. [00:19:39] Speaker 01: Another reason for affirming here is that this is not appropriate equitable relief, which is what they're entitled to under Section 1303F. [00:19:48] Speaker 01: Participants, this is undisputed, participants cannot benefit from any recovery in this case less than about $500 million. [00:19:57] Speaker 01: And the district court said that, quote, I don't see how the Pilots Association can gain anything more from this, regardless of how the court decides. [00:20:04] Speaker 01: This is because once PBGC audits plan assets, the law says that any increase or decrease in the value of those assets [00:20:13] Speaker 01: is suffered by or credited to PVGC. [00:20:18] Speaker 01: Even in the unlikely event that assets were revalued, they have to flow through the statutory priority categories. [00:20:25] Speaker 01: They would go first to paying guaranteed benefits before they could go to non-guaranteed benefits. [00:20:30] Speaker 01: And guaranteed benefits were underfunded by nearly $500 million in this case. [00:20:35] Speaker 01: Yet another reason that this can't be appropriate equitable relief is that the statute of limitations has run, had run by the time USAPA brought this lawsuit on any of the kinds of claims that they raise here. [00:20:46] Speaker 01: They run from three to six years, as we detail in our brief. [00:20:50] Speaker 01: USAPA argues that these violations were in plain sight when PVTC became trustee, that PVTC argued about them in the bankruptcy court in 2003. [00:20:58] Speaker 01: By 2009, the statute of limitations had run. [00:21:02] Speaker 01: And finally, just the harm to PBDC and the public of appointing a statutory replacement trustee. [00:21:09] Speaker 01: This would be a drastic remedy. [00:21:11] Speaker 01: It's supposed to be only for egregious malfeasance. [00:21:13] Speaker 01: PBDC is trustee of thousands of pension plans, becomes trustee of roughly 100 more every year. [00:21:20] Speaker 01: If we need to face this danger in every case, it's dangerous precedent that could drain the agency's resources, could delay payment of benefits to the participants that recover. [00:21:32] Speaker 01: If there are no further questions, we'll rest on our brief. [00:21:35] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:21:40] Speaker 03: Thank you very much. [00:21:40] Speaker 03: Thank you, Your Honors. [00:21:41] Speaker 03: A few brief points. [00:21:42] Speaker 03: When PBGC becomes statutory trustee, those fiduciary duties apply to those that apply to all statutory trustees. [00:21:49] Speaker 03: It gets the duties and powers that Congress created especially for statutory trustees. [00:21:54] Speaker 03: In PBGC's argument, you heard that Ms. [00:21:57] Speaker 03: Connolly say several times that USAPA hasn't discovered any actual liabilities. [00:22:01] Speaker 03: USAPA as a union is not empowered to do the sort of investigation that it could even come up with that sort of number. [00:22:10] Speaker 03: PVGC is in essence making a harmless error argument, saying that there's not $500 million worth of claims, therefore it's defaults for harmless. [00:22:20] Speaker 03: But like all other harmless error arguments, that's PVGC's burden to carry. [00:22:24] Speaker 03: And PBGC is specially empowered by Section 1342 to do the investigation to decide whether or not there is up to $500 million worth of liability. [00:22:34] Speaker 03: We don't disagree, Your Honors, that collectability is a component of determining whether a value of a liability or taking an amount of a liability and then turning it into a value to add to the assets. [00:22:44] Speaker 03: But without doing any sort of investigation, we don't even know what the bare minimum is for collectability. [00:22:50] Speaker 03: We don't know what the defendant's [00:22:52] Speaker 03: Assets are like insurance policies. [00:22:54] Speaker 03: We don't have an assessment of the likelihood of success because PBGC never did the investigation, even a cursory investigation, come up with that conclusion. [00:23:03] Speaker 03: The actuarial assumptions... Whose burden is it? [00:23:05] Speaker 04: Is it your burden as the proponent to establish at least some reasonable cause to believe that the recovery would be more than $500 million or does... I don't believe so, Your Honor. [00:23:17] Speaker 04: In our view... The Board has to prove that [00:23:21] Speaker 04: that would be less than $500 million? [00:23:24] Speaker 03: In our view, USAPA satisfies its burden by demonstrating that PBGC has a duty and that it breached that duty. [00:23:33] Speaker 03: PBGC is now coming in, and that is a legal duty that the statutory trustee owes to us. [00:23:38] Speaker 03: And the mere breach of it is an injury that this court and the lower court can redress by ordering PBGC to comply with that duty. [00:23:44] Speaker 03: Now, PBGC contends that, in effect, [00:23:47] Speaker 03: It's not worth complying with because there isn't going to be $500 million worth of potential claims. [00:23:52] Speaker 03: We view that as a harmless error argument, and that harmless error argument is something that PVGC, as the one advancing it, has the burden to carry. [00:24:01] Speaker 03: In what sense? [00:24:03] Speaker 03: Liabilities, assets? [00:24:04] Speaker 03: At the time that the plan was terminated, the assets were just a little over a billion dollars, I believe. [00:24:10] Speaker 03: And the liabilities were over three billion dollars. [00:24:13] Speaker 03: So that's about two and a half billion dollars. [00:24:17] Speaker 04: Would you respond to your opposing counsel's point regarding the average retirement age? [00:24:26] Speaker 04: That number that you're using is just for a brief period of time, not overall. [00:24:33] Speaker 03: I believe that the statements that PBGC made in the bankruptcy proceeding were, I have its brief right here, that, and I'm quoting from page 164 of the second volume of the Joint Appendix, the average [00:24:48] Speaker 03: Age 60, expected retirement age, is unrealistic and unreasonable. [00:24:51] Speaker 03: It is inconsistent with the actual experience of the pilot's plan and with expected retirement behavior. [00:24:58] Speaker 03: In other words, and then there's some facts below it that show that in the years leading up to termination of the plan, 71 of 85 retirements in the year 2001 occurred before the age of 60. [00:25:10] Speaker 03: over half of the current payees retired before the age of 60. [00:25:14] Speaker 03: So in 2003, if you look at all beneficiaries currently collecting under the plan, going back many, many years, over half retired before the age of 60. [00:25:24] Speaker 03: So while it is the case that PBGC came off with the age 56 using its regulations, [00:25:29] Speaker 03: It did not support that age 56 solely on the basis of its regulation. [00:25:35] Speaker 03: It directly criticized the alternative 60 because it was inconsistent with the plan's experience in the many years leading up to termination. [00:25:44] Speaker 03: If there are no further questions, Your Honors, we ask that the judgment of the district court be reversed and remanded so that that court could be the one to decide in the first instance what sort of equitable relief is appropriate. [00:25:55] Speaker 03: Thank you very much. [00:25:55] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:25:56] Speaker 03: The case is submitted.