This page updated July 2011

The US Supreme Court has ruled in the case mentioned above.  Even a summary is lengthy but insofar as there was a "winner", scheme members have won.  The Court repeated established opinion (held both in the UK and US) that where there is a recorded deal (as in the case of trust deeds) then that deal should not be changed by the courts, even if what the scheme members were told was very different from what the documented small print says.  However, the Court opened up the prospect of compensation for the scheme members where they were misinformed.   Significantly, the Court rejected the view that in order to receive compensation the individual scheme members would have to demonstrate that the misinformation led them to take some losing action.

A verdict has been reached in the The Prudential Staff case which AMIPP has told you about.  The verdict is not good news for scheme members or trustees.  The particulars of the case were about Prudential leading the staff to believe one thing about discretionary increases and then doing a different thing.  There are negligible prospects of IBM ever providing discretionary increases so that part of the verdict is irrelevant to IBM.  The negative part is in the judge's attitude.

While acknowledging the employer had a duty to maintain trust and confidence in the employer/employee (and past employee) relationship, the judge held that breach of the duty required conduct of "some seriousness"
and the test was "a severe one".  Thus this judge was more towards the master-slave end of the spectrum of views of the relationship, as opposed to the mutual-trust end.

The judge also commented that the employer was not obliged to engage in genuine negotiation with the trustees before making its decision.  This makes things difficult for trustees because the many aspects of a pension scheme can lead to several agreements - the trustees are in a subservient role if these agreements are not viewed as a whole.  Perhaps this indicates that our trustees were naive to enter into any agreements with the Corporation that were ultimately based on trust and they should instead have viewed the Corporation as an adversary in the matter of delivering final salary benefits.  Whatever this would have led to, it is likely the results would have been specific and made available to us, and thus not dependent on the views of a particular judge.

A small amusement - the Prudential scheme actuary was Mr Fudge.

We are told IBM has settled out of court a victimisation claim.  The settlement terms are undisclosed; we are told the claimant is very happy with the outcome.  This represents a success for Now Legal, the solicitors that are also handling the hundreds of claims about unfair dismissal and age discrimination, but the circumstances are different so this result has little bearing on the other cases. 

You may not be pleased by the level at which the UK government has set the floor for pension increases, but at least it is well defined.  The German regulations leave more room for interpretation.  Courts there have found that IBM strayed beyond the bounds of legality, in seeking to make lower increases.  Unfortunately, the legal system requires the retirees to each individually bring a case about this.  AMIPP has been told that despite all the cases that have been brought being decided against IBM, IBM is not willing to recognise its mistake and adjust pensions for all the retirees.  (You can find more by Google-ing "ibm renten anpassung" and "ibm renten arbeitsgericht".)    18/3/11

  Bribery in Asia has not much to do with IBM UK pensions but it is relevant to what is implied when IBM settles out of court.  22/3/11

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Pension Trusts operate under trust law.  This is effectively a set of precedents for interpreting the acts and regulations.

The Pensions Ombudsman is part of the legal process.  The process of investigation and determination is described in the Complaints section.  The effectiveness in practical terms is discussed in Can the Ombudsman be Effective .

Newsletter 8 describes the limitations of what can be learned from an Ombudsman's determination.  Some of the questions we hope for indications on are described here. Most of our newsletters contain a comment on some legal aspect.

The Ombudsman has to reflect current law.  The consumer protection for occupational pensioners may need strengthening.  If this happens it will stem from the Pickering Review  (see newsletter 9) or a similar later review. 

Here is a link to a case that might be seen as supporting IBM's 2006 decision to change the C-Plan from a final salary scheme to a some-part-of-final-salary scheme.