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Breyer, J., dissenting
any other "reachback" firm). They are miners whose labor benefited Eastern when they were younger and healthier. Insofar as working conditions created a risk of future health problems for those miners, Eastern created those conditions. And these factors help to distinguish Eastern from others with respect to a later obligation to pay the health care costs that inevitably arise in old age. See, e. g., 138 Cong. Rec. 34001 (1992) (Conference Report on Coal Act) (Coal Act assigns liability to "those companies which employed the retirees . . . and thereby benefitted from their services"); Hearings on Provisions Relating to the Health Benefits of Retired Coal Miners before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 8-9, 32 (1993) (hereinafter Hearings on Health Benefits); House Committee on Ways and Means, Financing UMWA Coal Miner "Orphan Retiree" Health Benefits, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 50-51 (Comm. Print 1993) (hereinafter House Report).
Congress has sometimes imposed liability, even "retro-active" liability, designed to prevent degradation of a natural resource, upon those who have used and benefited from it. See, e. g., Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, 42 U. S. C. § 9601 et seq. (1994 ed. and Supp. I). That analogy, while imperfect, calls attention to the special tie between a firm and its former employee, a human resource, that helps to explain the special retroactive liability. That connection, while not by itself justifying retroactive liability here, helps to distinguish a firm like Eastern, which employed a miner but no longer makes coal, from other funding sources, say, current coal producers or coal consumers, who now make or use coal but who have never employed that miner or benefited from his work.
More importantly, the record demonstrates that Eastern, before 1965, contributed to the making of an important "promise" to the miners. That "promise," even if not contractually enforceable, led the miners to "develo[p]" a reasonable "expectation" that they would continue to receive
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