Supreme Court to decide Wal-Mart and power plant cases
The justices will hear the retailer's appeal that one sex bias claim should
not be able to represent 1.5 million women and will consider halting an
environmental suit against coal-fired power plants.
By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau
December 7, 2010
Reporting from Washington
The Supreme Court announced Monday it would hear two major appeals from
corporate America that seek to block mass lawsuits, one involving a huge sex
bias claim against Wal-Mart and the other a massive environmental suit that aims
to hold coal-fired power plants responsible for contributing to global
warming.
In both cases, the justices agreed to consider stopping the suits before they
could move toward a trial.
The move is only the latest sign that the court under Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr. is inclined to rein in big-money lawsuits against businesses. The
conservative justices have been particularly skeptical of sprawling suits that
could run on for years and lead to enormous verdicts.
In the global warming case, industry lawyers played up this theme. They cited
the mass litigation over asbestos and tobacco and said the climate change suits,
unless halted, could make those "look like peanuts."
In the Wal-Mart case, the justices will decide whether the retail giant can
be sued for sexual discrimination in the largest workplace class-action suit in
the nation's history. A federal judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
in San Francisco cleared the suit to proceed as a class action on behalf of as
many as 1.5 million women who were employed at Wal-Mart in the last decade. The
suit contends women were regularly paid less than men and denied promotions.
The justices will not decide whether Wal-Mart is guilty of bias. Instead,
they will rule on whether a retailer must defend itself against a single lawsuit
that speaks for more than a million employees.
Since 1966, the federal rules of civil procedures have allowed individual
plaintiffs to sue as "representative" of a class of persons, but "only if there
are questions of law or fact common to the class." The lawyers who sued Wal-Mart
said the company had a common corporate culture that reserved most management
jobs for men. Wal-Mart disagrees and argues that because hiring and promotions
decisions are made by individual managers in its 3,400 stores, the employees do
not have a common complaint.
The issue of when a suit can proceed as a class action is of great interest
to corporate lawyers and the trial bar. If a suit gets the go-ahead to proceed
as a class action, companies feel pressure to offer a settlement rather than
risk a potentially crippling jury verdict.
The global warming suit, if allowed to proceed, could be even more
significant. It will determine whether judges can rule that pollution is a
public nuisance and on that basis set limits on carbon emissions. The case to be
heard by the court concerns power plants in the Midwest and South, but similar
nuisance suits have been filed against the auto, oil, coal and chemical
industries, asserting they should be held liable for contributing to climate
change.
Environmentalists and lawyers for several states, including New York,
California and Connecticut, have backed the suits. They are frustrated by the
slow pace of progress in Washington and say the courts must act. David Doniger,
policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate Center, said
the justices should "keep the courthouse door open until the executive branch
actually protects the American people" by curbing carbon emissions.
But lawyers for the Obama administration urged the high court to stop the
global warming suit. They say addressing climate change is a "political
question," not a legal one, and it should be resolved by Congress and the
Environmental Protection Agency, not through courts and lawsuits.
The high court gave environmentalists a big win in 2007 when it ruled
that greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, were air pollutants under the Clean
Air Act and subject to federal regulation. That decision cleared the way for the
EPA to issue new rules limiting carbon emissions, including from vehicles. But
the agency has not set new limits for old power plants, and Congress has been
unwilling to adopt a broad climate change bill.
The power plant lawsuit was described as "opening a new frontier" in the
climate change fight when it began in 2004. Eight states, New York City and
several environmental groups filed suit against four private power companies and
one federally run public utility, which they described as the "five largest
emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States." They won a preliminary victory
last year when the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York cleared the suit to
proceed.
In their appeal, lawyers for the power industry called the suit "breathtaking
in scope" and "staggering" in its implications. It would allow a single judge to
set nationwide rules for carbon emissions, they said. Justice Sonia Sotomayor
said she would step aside because she heard the case when it first came to the
appeals court in Manhattan.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times