Geezz ... should we be surprised that the US Supreme Court is in the "protection" business?Dana Milbank at Wapo has this to say:
Chief Justice John Roberts was pained.
Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company -- but that's not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.
"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court.
The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. "Well," he said, "it can hire fit and competent people."
The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused.
7 comments:
Didn't earn him any points with Roberts, but it was well said.
Who cares about earning points with Roberts ... he's an asshole, who is no friend to the American people or the Constitution.
BAC
bac, scoff if you want, but huge damage awards are one reason the US won't see universal healthcare.
Ambulance chasers like John Edwards want nothing more than they want poorly represented US taxpayers as the defendants in medical malpractice lawsuits. There are no deeper pockets than American taxpayers.
Thus, if you want to ensure that we never see universal healthcare, then stand aside while tort lawyers extract every dime from every possible venue.
FE - the case is NOT about healthcare, or didn't you bother to read it? It's about a corporation that would lose, as the story mentions, "roughly three weeks' worth of profits." The ONLY language these corporations listen to is "money" ... that is how you get their attension, and get them to do the right thing.
Roberts is clearly in the pocket of Corporate America ... and that's a travesty.
BAC
Here is one for the separation for church and state. And I wish I had thought it up, but I am not that smart. Harvey Cox gets all the credit for this one.
This scenario is what happens when a god is made of the marketplace.
Instead of the old "God's will" it becomes "let the market control it" which boils down to the kind of mentality that thinks any stand for anything other than pure profit is blasphemy.
This makes me want to vomit.
That was a great response by Jeffrey Fisher. Thanks for posting this, it reminds us once again how corporate profit is put ahead of everything else in this country.
Scoring points with Roberts is only important if you want your side to win in a Supreme Court case. Piss on him and you have at least four votes guaranteed against your side.
I completely support what that person said. It was completely honest and accurate. Roberts was also completely out of line with his line of questioning as the question before the court was not how to keep corporations from paying putative damages but whether the damages being awarded were excessive.
Post a Comment