Lucent Retiree Medical Settlement - Home
This lawsuit claims and alleges that the Defendants violated the terms of the medical and dental benefit plans that covered management retirees of Lucent Technologies (and retirees of predecessor companies, including certain units of AT&T, Western Electric and Bell Labs) during the period October 1, 1999 to September 30, 2006. The Plaintiffs claim that the Defendants violated the terms of the plans by making changes to the plans in the form of higher co-pays and deductibles and increased monthly contribution amounts during the period 1999-2003, a period of time that the plans contained provisions that legally obligated the Defendants to maintain "substantially the same" benefits that the plans were providing in 1998. The Plaintiffs also claim that the Defendants violated terms of the medical and dental plans because Lucent did not spend the required minimum average cost per person under the plans during 2006. These plan provisions were in force due to Lucent's four transfers of excess pension assets to a welfare benefits account within the pension plan during the period September 1999 to December 2001 to help pay the cost of providing retiree medical benefits. The provision of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that allowed these transfers, Section 420, required these plan provisions which obligated Lucent to maintain "substantially the same" benefits through September 30, 2003, and then to maintain the average per capita cost from October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2006.
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