Exxon Ruling Helps Close the Door to Civil Justice Remedies for Citizens

[marmar]

WaPo, via ReclaimDemocracy!:



Exxon Ruling Helps Close the Door to Civil Justice Remedies for Citizens


By Steven Pearlstein
First Published by the Washington Post, July 4, 2008



Editor's note: The Supreme Court majority, in its relentless activism on behalf of corporate interests, effectively outlawed punitive damages for the largest corporations. In reducing the $2.5 billion judgement against Exxon-Mobil Corporation to $500 million, it has rendered the sum inconsequential. Exxon-Mobil grosses more than double that every day and its net profit exceeded $40 billion in 2007.

No doubt they were throwing back double vodkas at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week following the Supreme Court's decision to cut the punitive damages in the Exxon Valdez oil spill to a week's worth of Exxon Mobil's profits.

The chamber, through two affiliates, the National Chamber Litigation Center and the Institute for Legal Reform, has waged a decade-long campaign to make it harder -- much harder -- for businesses to be sued for their mistakes or their fraudulent behavior and to limit damage awards in those cases that manage to get to a jury.

In recent years, that well-funded legal, legislative and public relations effort has chalked up a series of impressive wins, including the prosecution of three of the country's best-known and most successful plaintiff's attorneys -- Richard Scruggs, Melvyn Weiss and William Lerach -- on charges of having abused the legal system. The image of the trial lawyer is so tarnished that the Association of Trial Lawyers of America saw fit to change its name to the more nebulous American Association for Justice.

For the chamber, however, the biggest win of all was last week's Supreme Court ruling that, as a matter of federal common law, punitive damages should rarely exceed the so-called compensatory or economic damages assigned by the judge and jury. The high court affirmed a legitimate role for punitive damages as a way for society to exact a measure of revenge for reckless and malicious behavior and deter others. But Justice David Souter, writing for himself and four colleagues, said fairness demands that such a penalty must be "reasonably predictable in its severity" so that even wrongdoers "can look ahead with some ability to know what the stakes are in choosing one course of action or another." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2008/exxon_ruling_civil_justice.php