Alcoa Urges Class Decertification, Pointing to Missing Contracts

Federal appeals judges on Thursday tried to untangle a thorny dispute between Alcoa USA Corp. and a group of retirees who claim their contracts were violated when the company made changes to their health benefits.

An attorney for Alcoa repeatedly argued that some of the contracts in question couldn’t even be located, making a lower court’s grant of class certification unreasonable.

“If you’re certifying a class action for a breach of contract, you at least have to have the contracts before you,” David Raimer of Jones Day said before a panel of the US Court of Appeals for ...