A U.S. appeals court yesterday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by the United Auto Workers union claiming that General Motors Co. was required to pay $450 million to cover medical benefits for an affiliate's retirees, Reuters reported. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said that GM assumed the obligation for the payment two years prior to its 2009 bankruptcy but that a subsequent agreement with the union extinguished the company's responsibility. The payment had been part of a 2007 contract between the old GM, bankrupt auto parts maker Delphi Automotive and the UAW. It was not, however, included in a different contract on medical benefits signed in 2009 by the GM that emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy. The UAW claimed that the new GM owed the money by virtue of Delphi's own emergence from bankruptcy in October 2009. The Sixth Circuit, affirming a lower court, said the language of the 2009 agreement made clear that GM did not owe the payment.
