RAMSTACK: Pro-business rulings blasted

COLUMN:

Members of a Senate committee criticized the Supreme Court last week for a series of rulings they say show favoritism toward big business.

Some senators said the court trampled the little guys to help corporations protect their assets.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, accused the Supreme Court of substituting its own will for the intent of the laws approved by Congress.

“I’m more concerned about the rights of people,” Mr. Leahy said a during a discussion of the Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker case.

The Supreme Court ruled that the punitive damages paid to about 32,000 plaintiffs could be no more than the compensatory damages, which refers to provable injuries such as property damage or monetary loss. Punitive damages are designed to punish wrongdoers.

The court’s decision reduced the amount of punitive damages Exxon Mobil needed to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound from $2.5 billion to $507 million.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the decision, saying it protected corporations against runaway juries and provided a predictable formula businesses can use to determine their potential litigation costs.

Mr. Leahy panned the decision at a hearing last week.

“If Congress had wanted to cap punitive damages for disasters that impact thousands of Americans, it could have but it did not,” Mr. Leahy said.

The result of the Supreme Court’s pro-business tilt is that during a time of economic turmoil, “Instead of protecting [Americans] from financial injuries, they’ve done just the opposite,” he said.

Osa Schultz, an Alaska fisherman whose business was hurt by the oil spill, said fishermen from the Prince William Sound area are likely to recover no more than 45 percent of their losses because of the Supreme Court’s limit on punitive damages.

“Punitive damages are the only means by which citizens can punish a corporation for wrongdoing,” she said.

Business also scored a big victory with the Supreme Court’s January decision in Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta, which limited the right of corporate investors to sue when they fall prey to fraud.

A group of investors accused cable TV provider Charter Communications of mishandling their money under a securities-fraud scheme. The value of their stock plummeted when the fraud became public.

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