This consolidated case involves miners who worked for Apogee Coal Company in Kentucky during the 1990s. At that time, Apogee was a subsidiary of Arch Resources, Inc. Rather than purchasing commercial insurance, Arch self-insured Apogee against black lung claims. In 2005, Arch sold Apogee and its associated black lung liabilities to Magnum Coal. Three years later, Patriot Coal acquired Magnum and its subsidiaries, including Apogee. When Patriot filed for bankruptcy in 2015, the Department of Labor issued instructions to hold Arch liable as the responsible insurer for black lung claims against Apogee that accrued while Arch owned and self-insured the company. The miners in these cases applied for benefits between 2015 and 2017. Administrative law judges and the Benefits Review Board affirmed the district directors' decisions, naming Apogee as the responsible operator and Arch as the responsible insurer. Arch appealed, arguing that the 2005 sale relieved it of any obligation to pay benefits.
The Sixth Circuit reviews the Board's legal conclusions de novo. The petitioners, Arch Resources and Apogee Coal Company, argued that the Board erred in holding Arch liable for benefits owed by Apogee. However, the court noted that both Arch and Apogee conceded that they were making the very same arguments based on materially identical facts that the court had already rejected in a published decision two years prior, *Apogee Coal Co. v. Director, OWCP (Howard)*, 112 F.4th 343 (6th Cir. 2024). The court emphasized that because the parties themselves recognized the binding nature of that prior decision, the court was obligated to follow it. The court found no new legal ground to distinguish the current petitions from the precedent set in *Howard*, which had already resolved the issues of successor liability and self-insurance obligations in this context.
The denial of the petitions means that Arch Resources must continue to pay the accrued black lung benefits to the individual respondents. The decision reinforces the stability of the federal black lung benefits system by preventing the shifting of liabilities to the government when a parent company sells a self-insured subsidiary. It confirms that a parent corporation cannot evade its self-insurance obligations simply by selling a subsidiary, provided the prior sale did not legally extinguish the liability under the specific statutory framework. The order stands as a final enforcement of the Benefits Review Board's decision.