Puerto Rico Hospital Workers Lose Appeal Over Pension Cuts

Disabled retirees of a Puerto Rico hospital lost their bid to revive a lawsuit over benefits they lost when the hospital terminated its pension plan in 2003.

The retirees said their lawsuit was wrongly dismissed after certain defendants lied under oath about the nature of the hospital’s employee benefit plans. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected their appeal Jan. 25, saying the alleged misstatements made by defendants didn’t rise to the level of being a “fraud on the court.”

The lawsuit touches on a hot-button legal issue: namely, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act’s “church plan” ...