Kinder Morgan Sheds Some Claims Involving Predecessors’ Pension

Kinder Morgan Inc. convinced a federal court to dismiss some of the claims against it in a class action asserting that amendments to the pension plan it inherited when it acquired El Paso Corp. impermissibly reduced employee benefits.

The plan wound its “way through several corporate transactions over many decades” and had a number of amendments, Judge Keith P. Ellison explained for the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Curtis T. Pedersen and Beverly Leutloff claimed that the corporate acquisitions caused their pension plan to be “silently” reinterpreted to slash benefits in violation of the Employee Retirement ...