WASHINGTON – Three Indiana pensions will lose $6 million after the Supreme Court refused Monday to hear Indiana’s protest about Chrysler’s bankruptcy.
The decision ends the state’s argument that three Hoosier pension funds should get a bigger share of the bankrupt automaker’s assets.
Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock had argued that a trust for retired Chrysler workers should return $4.6 billion to creditors of the bankrupt car company after the automaker sold its prime assets to Fiat.
Three Indiana pension funds representing police officers and teachers lost $6 million in the Fiat sale.
Mourdock protested at the time but failed to stop the June bankruptcy. The court said he didn’t show that the pension funds would suffer "irreparable harm" from the bankruptcy.
In September, Mourdock asked the Supreme Court to reconsider how money was distributed to Chrysler’s creditors, including the Hoosier pension funds.
"On its face, this deal smacks of the sort of insider favoritism that the Bankruptcy Code was designed to prevent," the state said in a filing with the court. He said Mourdock said he was no longer trying to stop the bankruptcy-prompted sale to Fiat but to change it "to the extent that the distribution of proceeds was inequitable."
But the Supreme Court said no.
