A Baffling Texas Supreme Court Ruling Could Make Juries Irrelevant

[marmar]

From the Texas Observer, via AlterNet:



A Baffling Texas Supreme Court Ruling Could Make Juries Irrelevant

By Anthony Zurcher, Texas Observer. Posted May 17, 2007.



The Texas Supreme Court must now decide if it will second-guess its decision to second-guess a jury.

The soft drink business in East Texas was a relatively friendly affair when Jerry Dudley started out 40 years ago. Family-owned companies bottled colas and fruit drinks, and sold them to local grocers or mom-and-pop convenience stores. There was competition, but it wasn't cutthroat. There weren't international conglomerates trying to muscle you out of the market, and maybe drive you out of business.

But in the early 1990s, that all began to change. Dudley, president and general manager of Harmar Bottling Co. in Paris, Texas, began seeing his soft drinks nudged from prime shelf space -- even out of stores entirely -- to make way for a competitor's products. He watched local bottlers disappear one by one, losing the struggle to stay in business.

It got so bad that Harmar and some of his fellow independent bottlers banded together and sued the heavyweights of carbonated beverages -- Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. and Coca-Cola Inc., Pepsico Inc. and Pepsi's bottler, Delta Beverage Group -- claiming that in their zeal to dominate the region's soft drink market, the corporate titans had broken Texas law by engaging in predatory, anticompetitive business practices.

Pepsi settled before trial. Coke -- with its never-say-die litigation strategy -- fought the suit. In 2000, after a six-week trial, a jury in Daingerfield, Texas, found Coca-Cola Enterprises -- a bottling company 40 percent-owned by Coca-Cola -- guilty of breaking state antitrust laws. Although a far cry from the $100 million they were hoping for, Harmar and the other regional bottlers won a $15.6 million judgment. Almost seven years later, they have yet to see a dime.

In late 2006, after sitting on the case for nearly two years, the Texas Supreme Court finally ruled on Coke's appeal of the suit. By a 5-4 vote, the state's highest civil court threw out the verdict.

Reversing a multimillion dollar judgment is not out of character for a court packed with conservative judges, six of them appointed by Gov. Rick Perry before winning pro forma elections. But the legal reasoning that the slim majority used to justify its ruling was so alarming -- and sets such an unappetizing precedent -- that it has spawned incredulity in Texas legal circles. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/51977/