Judge Admits Error in Ruling on $6.5 Billion Yellow Pension Spat

A court ruling that likely wiped out any recovery for shareholders of the bankrupt trucker Yellow Corp. contained an error that may require a key decision against the company to be reversed, a judge said on Monday.

US Bankruptcy Judge Craig T. Goldblatt told Yellow and its main shareholder MFN Partners LP that he erred when finding that the company had defaulted on its pension obligations before the trucker shut down and filed bankruptcy last year. The timing of any default could impact how much Yellow owes for withdrawing from an employee pension, according to court records.

The judge said on Monday that if he reverses his ruling, he is likely to require a new trial to determine the precise date that Yellow defaulted on the pension obligations. The outcome is likely to have a big impact in the case, he said.

“We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars,” Goldblatt said in a hearing in US Bankruptcy Court Monday in Wilmington, Delaware.

Pension officials, who claim Yellow owes them $6.5 billion, argued that the mistake doesn’t matter and urged Goldblatt not to change his September ruling. Yellow and MFN argued that Goldblatt’s ruling improperly inflated the pension liability.

Goldblatt asked both sides to submit written arguments on the issue, which he will use to decide his next step.

Pension Dispute

Last month, Goldblatt held that Yellow’s pension withdrawal liability shouldn’t be discounted to its present value because Yellow had defaulted. Yellow argued that amounted to a factual error because it hadn’t defaulted on the debt.

Goldblatt’s ruling would “massively increase” calculations of its withdrawal liability and “drastically and unfairly diminish distributions” to non-pension unsecured creditors, Yellow said in a filing.

MFN argued that Goldblatt’s ruling improperly inflated pension liability because it determined that Covid-era funds received by pension funds under the American Rescue Plan Act shouldn’t be used to calculate a plan’s unfunded vested benefits.

Pension officials argued that Yellow didn’t dispute that it had defaulted until after Goldblatt’s ruling came out. Since the company waited so long, Goldblatt should reject Yellow’s request to reconsider the decision, the pensions said in a court filing.

Should it stand, the September ruling means there is little chance the company will have any cash left for shareholders like MFN after Yellow finishes selling its real estate portfolio and paying the pension penalty.

Goldblatt hasn’t yet set a payment amount, but the ruling means the 11 pension funds involved have the upper hand in how that debt is calculated. Yellow last year sold its trucking terminals for $1.9 billion, enough to cover all of the company’s secured debt but not pension claims.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which regulates retirements funds like those set up for Yellow’s union workers, said that other companies with traditional pension plans would have an incentive to cancel their retirement benefits if Yellow won, since shareholders wouldn’t be forced to pay a penalty.

The case is Yellow Corp., 23-11069, US Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Steven Church in Wilmington, Delaware at schurch3@bloomberg.net;
Evan Ochsner in Arlington at eochsner2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Natalie Harrison at nharrison73@bloomberg.net

Rheaa Rao

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