Whether collectively-bargained retiree healthcare benefits may be implied and do not require unequivocal contract language

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Fletcher v. Honeywell International Inc., 892 F.3d 217 (6th Cir. 2018) holds that a “CBA’s general durational clause applies to [retiree] healthcare benefits unless it contains clear, affirmative language indicating the contrary.” Fletcher holds that courts may not consider “extrinsic” trial evidence of the parties’ intentions even though the CBA—read “naturally’—is “arguably” ambiguous, “implies” healthcare until the retiree’s “death,” and explicitly promises to continue healthcare for the retiree’s survivors’ “lifetime.” Fletcher’s reluctant concurring judge recognizes that the Honeywell CBAs are “ambiguous” on “their face” and require consideration of “extrinsic evidence” to “ascertain the intent of the parties’—but that Sixth Circuit decisions “preclude” this. Fletcher raises these questions warranting review under S8.Ct.Rules 10(a) and (c): 1. whether Fletcher conflicts with CNH Industrial v. Reese, 1388 S.Ct. 761 (2018) and other Supreme Court decisions holding that obligations outlasting CBA expiration may be “implied” and with the Seventh Circuit holding that lifetime retiree healthcare obligations do not require “magic words’ or unequivocal contract language”; 2. whether Fletcher applies an anti-vesting presumption which conflicts with M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett, 135 8.Ct. 926 (2015), which abrogated all presumptions regarding retiree healthcare as violating “ordinary contract principles”; ii 3. whether Fletcher ignores “federal common law” patent and latent ambiguity principles, in conflict with Third and Seventh Circuit fringe-benefit decisions; 4, whether Fletcher elevates judicial suppositions over due process required by Rule 12(b)(6); and 5. whether Fletcher’s “new heightened standard” again warrants “exercise of this Court’s supervisory power” where Sixth Circuit judges write that the Circuit’s post-Tackett retiree healthcare decisions cause “contradiction and confusion in an area of the law that demands consistency and clarity”; that despite Tackett’s direction that “the parties’ intentions control,” the Circuit has “installed duration clauses as the new absolute determiner of intent, regardless of the actual intent of the parties”; and that the Circuit’s “jurisprudential path” since Tackett “should sit uneasily with all of us.”