The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Crown Vantage, a bankrupt paper mill company, finding that it is under no obligation to consider an offer to merge its pension plans as an alternative to terminating the plans, Bankruptcy Law360 reported yesterday. The High Court found Monday that Crown Vantage, which had been approached by a labor union pension fund to merge the company’s 17 defined-benefit pension plans into the union fund, was not required under federal law to consider the merger proposal. At the time of the labor union’s offer, Crown Vantage had already made a decision to terminate its pension plans and was deliberating over whether to put the money toward purchasing annuities for plan participants and beneficiaries. The union filed suit against Crown Vantage in bankruptcy court, accusing it of breaching its fiduciary duties under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) because it did not conduct an appropriate inquiry into the merger proposal. A federal bankruptcy court and a federal court ruled against the union, but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled in October 2005 that the paper mill operator had violated its duties to pension plan participants when it decided to annuitize its pension obligations instead of merging the plan with the labor union’s plan. The case is Beck v. Pace International Union, case number 05-1448, in the U.S. Supreme Court.