Cite as: 524 U. S. 498 (1998)
Opinion of OTMConnor, J.
whether or not the employers had agreed to ensure that benefits would be fully funded"); see also Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 265 ("Elementary considerations of fairness dictate that individuals should have an opportunity to know what the law is and to conform their conduct accordingly; settled expectations should not be lightly disrupted").
Respondents and their amici curiae assert that the extent of retroactive liability is justified because there was an implicit, industrywide agreement during the time that Eastern was involved in the coal industry to fund lifetime health benefits for qualifying miners and their dependents. That contention, however, is not supported by the pre-1974 NBCWA's. No contrary conclusion can be drawn from the few isolated statements of individuals involved in the coal industry, see, e. g., Brief for Respondents Peabody Holding Company, Inc., et al. 8-10, or from statements of Members of Congress while considering legislative responses to the issue of funding retiree benefits. Moreover, even though retirees received medical benefits before 1974, and perhaps developed a corresponding expectation that those benefits would continue, the Coal Act imposes liability respecting a much broader range of beneficiaries. In any event, the question is not whether miners had an expectation of lifetime benefits, but whether Eastern should bear the cost of those benefits as to miners it employed before 1966.
Eastern only participated in the 1947 and 1950 W&R Funds, which operated on a pay-as-you-go basis, and under which the degree of benefits and the classes of beneficiaries were subject to the trustees' discretion. Not until 1974, when ERISA forced revisions to the 1950 W&R Fund, could lifetime medical benefits under the multiemployer agreement have been viewed as promised. Eastern was no longer in the industry when the evergreen and guarantee clauses of the 1978 and subsequent NBCWA's shifted the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans from a defined contribution framework to a guarantee of defined benefits, at least for the life of the
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