Fellow Retirees,
Well, we’ve had our day in court. By the way, a great big thanks to our local for funding this trip.  It would have been very difficult without their help. We went out to San Francisco on Feb. 9, 2010.  I say we, meaning myself, Clair, Ron, Mark and our DBR, Jimbo Watson, and of course, our attorney, Robert Gregory. 
There was a court time change from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. It had us worried about getting to the airport in time for our 6:00 p.m. flight home.  We made it with a few minutes to spare! 
I believe everyone left the court with a very optimistic view.  The 3 judges were very thorough with their questions, especially the two female judges, McKeown and Berzon.  The third judge, Thompson, the sole male judge, didn’t say a word.  Although, every time a CBA#, page#, or paragraph# was referred to, he would turn to the correct place and he took a lot of notes.  I believe this judge was an appointment of President Reagan.  The other two were appointments of President Clinton.  Anyhow, the two Clinton appointees had done their homework and questioned the Raytheon attorney at great lengths.
In your representative’s opinions, we believe the two Clinton appointees were definitely leaning towards our side.  That is that the Raytheon appeal would not be honored.  We should know for sure in the next couple of weeks.
For those of you that care to listen to the proceedings, go to your internet server and type in http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/ and Click on “Advanced Search” and enter case number 08-16984.  Hit search, then click on either one of the two, Francis Alday vs Raytheon listings, you may download the .wma file to listen to or you may download the plugin at the site.  That should get you to the proceedings with Raytheon’s’ attorney starting his brief.  The entire proceeding is about 45 minutes long. Once the official judgment is made on this part of the lawsuit (premiums), then we’ll know where to go from there.
Dave Lillie