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Llc V. Barnhart Case Summary

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This case was also cited in PEABODY COAL CO., LLC v. BARNHART., 469 F.Supp.2d 240 (2007) case held in the United States District Court, D. Delaware. The decision on this case was made on January 11, 2007. According to this case, on September 14, 2005, the plaintiffs Peabody Coal Company, LLC (“Peabody”) and Eastern Associated Coal Corporation ("EACC") filed suit against defendant Jo Anne B. Barnhart ("Barnhart"), the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration ("SSA"). Plaintiffs' complaint that Barnhart's (defendant) actions of assigning them (plaintiffs) the responsibility for funding health and death benefits for certain retired coal industry employees violated both § 9706 of the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 ("Coal Act"), 26 U.S.C. …show more content…

§§ 551-559, 701-706. The court referred to the Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co., 537 U.S. 149, case stating the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Commissioner while accepting the coal companies argument that the specified date for action is jurisdictional, and could be to read as an act to allocate not the greatest, but the least, number of beneficiaries to a responsible operator. However, the congressional objective behind the Coal Act, is to read the statutory date as a “spur to prompt action”, not as a bar to tardy completion of the business. The court stated that the Commissioner's decision was within her authority and entitled to deference, and followed the statutory hierarchy laid out in § 9706 demonstrating that the commissioner’s decision was neither arbitrary nor capricious. The court agrees with the reasoning employed by the other federal courts which have addressed this issue and finds that the Commissioner's interpretation of the Coal Act, as well as commissioner subsequent decision to reassign beneficiaries to plaintiffs, was neither unambiguously forbidden by the statute nor beyond the bounds of the

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