50509 Marine LLC, et al. v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

This case is about the lower courts’ failure to respect stare decisis and unambiguous legislation. This petition is made necessary because lower courts have now invented new federal common law to evade this Court’s precedent set by Chicago Title & Tr. Co. v. Forty-One Thirty-Six Wilcox Bldg. Corp., 302 U.S. 120 (1937). The application of Chicago Title combined with the plain language of the relevant ERISA statutes required a result that both the district and circuit court found undesirable. Accordingly, the lower courts judicially altered the existing enforcement schemes contained within the “comprehensive and reticulated” ERISA legislation. Pet. App. 8a–13a, 23a–25a. These alterations are irreconcilable with state corporate law. It is incontrovertible that under Illinois law, Liberty Lighting Co., Inc. ceased to exist and its stock was “destroyed” no later than 1997. Pet. App. 25a. Chicago Title teaches that federal courts are powerless to change that. 302 U.S. at 128–29. Yet both the district court and the Eleventh Circuit have now held that, “under ERISA” the corporation “still existed” and had stock that could be owned, voted, and controlled in 2012. (Pet. App. 2a, 23a–24a). Accordingly, the Question Presented is: Whether under Chicago Title & Tr. Co. v. Forty-One Thirty-Six Wilcox Bldg. Corp., 302 U.S. 120 (1937) and the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, state law, not ERISA or federal common law, controls the questions of whether an Illinois corporation, that after a Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation dissolved in 1992, and had its stock destroyed in 1997 (1) still existed in 2012; and (2) had stock that was still owned and “controlled” with “voting rights” by the corporation’s 1992 shareholder in 2012?