Anderson V. Consolidated Rail Corp‪.‬

This age discrimination in employment case has its genesis in the lengthy struggle of our nation's railroads for survival. Consolidated Railroad Corporation (Conrail), now defunct, engaged in a reduction-in-force (RIF) in July 1995 when it involuntarily terminated thirty employees in its Central Office. In November 1998, these employees, all but one in the forty to fifty-five year age range, sued Conrail in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. They claimed that Conrail's decision to terminate them violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. SS 621-634 (ADEA). Examining each individual plaintiff 's prima facie case, the District Court found that certain plaintiffs had not satisfied the fourth element of the framework established by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973) because they could not show that Conrail retained a sufficiently younger and similarly situated employee for each employee terminated. The plaintiffs also claim that the District Court erred in rejecting their claims for pension benefits under ERISA S 510, 29 U.S.C. S 1140, and their claims for benefits under the Company's Voluntary Separation Program (VSP) of 1996. Seventeen of the plaintiffs timely appealed.*fn2 We affirm.