Kinder Morgan withdraws some claims over predecessors’ pensions

Kinder Morgan Inc. convinced a federal court to dismiss some claims against her in a class action lawsuit that alleged changes to a pension plan inherited from the El Paso Corp. acquisition impermissibly reduced employee benefits.

The plan “went through several corporate transactions over many decades” and had many amendments, explained Judge Keith P. Ellison for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Curtis T. Pedersen and Beverly Leutloff argued that the corporate takeovers caused their pension plan to be “quietly” reinterpreted to reduce benefits in violation of the Employee Retirement Act…