iceaura
06-26-08, 05:47 AM
So the people who lost their livelihoods and ways of life from the Exxon Valdez spill, not counting those of that group who have died while this case traveled the system under Exxon's guidance (about 20% of them), will receive another 15,000 dollars each. On average. 20 years later.
http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/06/25/supreme-court-slashes-25b-exxon-valdez-award/
The Exxon case, in contrast, was a federal maritime case, and the U.S. Supreme Court had the power to reduce the award on much narrower grounds: as a mere exercise of its so-called federal common-law jurisdiction. Since punitive damages awards in federal maritime cases are not a major source of anxiety for the business community, the case could easily have been decided in a way that would have had little significance for Chamber-of-Commerce types.
Nevertheless, Justice David Souter, writing for a 5-3 majority, seemed to go out of his way to hint that the rule he was announcing for federal maritime cases in the Exxon case - a rule that generally dictates a maximum 1:1 ratio between a punitive damages award and a jury’s compensatory award - might also reflect what the outcome would have been had it been decided on constitutional grounds. “In this case,” he wrote in the last footnote of the decision, “the constitutional outer limit may well be 1:1.”
- - - -
The Exxon case also raised one side issue - an increasingly sore point among Supreme Court practitioners: the problem of justices recusing themselves from cases, usually because of stock-holdings. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself in the Exxon case (the justices do not state their reasons when they do so) and, as a result, one of the issues the Court had planned to decide in this case - whether federal maritime law permits punitive damages to be awarded against a corporate defendant solely based upon the reckless conduct of a “managerial employee” - resulted in a 4-4 tie vote. In such cases, the lower court’s ruling stands, but has no precedential weight.
Earlier this term an important preemption case, Warner-Lambert v. Kent, suffered a similar fate, while the Court last month was forced to decline review of a decision permitting a massive lawsuit against companies who did business with apartheid South Africa to go forward when four justices had to recuse themselves, leaving the court without a quorum. The mystery of how "strict constructionist" appointees to Justice always seem so corporate friendly once on the bench, when the modern corporation did not even exist at the time of the Constitution's writing, is apparently not going to be solved any time soon.
note: only three of the current sitting Justices were on the Court when the accident happened.
http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/06/25/supreme-court-slashes-25b-exxon-valdez-award/
The Exxon case, in contrast, was a federal maritime case, and the U.S. Supreme Court had the power to reduce the award on much narrower grounds: as a mere exercise of its so-called federal common-law jurisdiction. Since punitive damages awards in federal maritime cases are not a major source of anxiety for the business community, the case could easily have been decided in a way that would have had little significance for Chamber-of-Commerce types.
Nevertheless, Justice David Souter, writing for a 5-3 majority, seemed to go out of his way to hint that the rule he was announcing for federal maritime cases in the Exxon case - a rule that generally dictates a maximum 1:1 ratio between a punitive damages award and a jury’s compensatory award - might also reflect what the outcome would have been had it been decided on constitutional grounds. “In this case,” he wrote in the last footnote of the decision, “the constitutional outer limit may well be 1:1.”
- - - -
The Exxon case also raised one side issue - an increasingly sore point among Supreme Court practitioners: the problem of justices recusing themselves from cases, usually because of stock-holdings. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself in the Exxon case (the justices do not state their reasons when they do so) and, as a result, one of the issues the Court had planned to decide in this case - whether federal maritime law permits punitive damages to be awarded against a corporate defendant solely based upon the reckless conduct of a “managerial employee” - resulted in a 4-4 tie vote. In such cases, the lower court’s ruling stands, but has no precedential weight.
Earlier this term an important preemption case, Warner-Lambert v. Kent, suffered a similar fate, while the Court last month was forced to decline review of a decision permitting a massive lawsuit against companies who did business with apartheid South Africa to go forward when four justices had to recuse themselves, leaving the court without a quorum. The mystery of how "strict constructionist" appointees to Justice always seem so corporate friendly once on the bench, when the modern corporation did not even exist at the time of the Constitution's writing, is apparently not going to be solved any time soon.
note: only three of the current sitting Justices were on the Court when the accident happened.