Doug Pappas’s excellent “Business of Baseball Weblog” covers a recent lawsuit against Major League Baseball filed by former players upset that the rules were changed to make it easier to vest for pensions.
They allege that they were discriminated against when the pension rules were amended 22 years ago to reduce the vesting period for pension benefits from five years to 43 days and for medical benefits from five years to one day, but only for players then active. In their world, it’s unlawful discrimination to negotiate better benefits for current employees without making those benefits retroactive for all existing retirees. In our world, it’s not. Indeed, other groups of retired players have sued and lost over this issue.
The lawsuit also complains about a one-time $10,000 payment made to former Negro Leaguers in 1997 who also weren’t eligible for the pension. (Pappas blog, Oct. 17; “Lawsuit alleges discrimination due to race”, AP, Oct. 16; complaint). When a lawyer files a class action, he or she is representing only a few members of the class who have retained that lawyer (called “the named plaintiffs”, since they are named in the caption of the suit), and is requesting the right to represent absent members of the class, who may or may not support the suit, and may or may not elect to opt out even if the court certifies the class. But the AP coverage, as is common in journalistic coverage of class actions, (see, e.g., Oct. 21), inexplicably focuses several paragraphs on prominent absent class members who had nothing to do with the lawsuit.
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