The Supremes, Wal-Mart & Class Action Suits….And the Cost of the Death Penality

THE SUPREMES THREW OUT THE GIANT CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST WAL-MART, & THE NY TIMES & THE LA TIMES SAY SCOTUS WAS WRONG

It is a case of far reaching consequence. Reuters explains the basics of the case and the ruling

The Supreme Court threw out on Monday a massive class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the biggest ever such case, in a major victory for the world’s largest retailer and for big business in general.

The justices unanimously ruled that more than 1 million female employees nationwide could not proceed together in the lawsuit seeking billions of dollars and accusing Wal-Mart of paying women less and giving them fewer promotions.

The Supreme Court agreed with Wal-Mart, the largest private U.S. employer, that the class-action certification violated federal rules for such lawsuits.

It accepted Wal-Mart’s argument that the female employees in different jobs at 3,400 different stores nationwide and with different supervisors do not have enough in common to be lumped together in a single class-action lawsuit.

Tuesday’s LA Times has a well-reasoned editorial about why the Supremes got it wrong and the women should have been allowed to sue.

Here’s a clip:

….The legal issues in the case were complicated, but the central question was a simple one and the court got it wrong. As a result of the decision, serious allegations against Wal-Mart dating back a decade won’t be tested in court, and similar lawsuits against other employers will never be undertaken at all.

The overall decision was 9 to 0 in favor of Wal-Mart. But on the specific and most substantial issue of whether Wal-Mart’s female employees might seek to join together because of a common experience of discrimination, the vote was 5 to 4.

Class-action suits of the kind Wal-Mart employees wanted to bring provide significant advantages over individual lawsuits. Among other things, they allow an avenue of relief for far-flung employees who might not be able to afford to bring lawsuits on their own.

The New York Times goes even further in an editorial that points out that the ruling will restrict class action suits in general.

The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia will make it substantially more difficult for class-action suits in all manner of cases to move forward. For 45 years, since Congress approved the criteria for class actions, the threshold for certification of a class has been low, with good reason because certification is merely the first step in a suit. Members of a potential class have had to show that they were numerous, had questions of law or fact in common and had representatives with typical claims who would protect the interests of the class.

Justice Scalia significantly raised the threshold of certification, writing that there must be “glue” holding together the claims of a would-be class. Now, without saying what the actual standard of proof is, the majority requires that potential members of a class show that they are likely to prevail at trial when they seek initial certification. In this change, the court has made fact-finding a major part of certification, increasing the cost and the stakes of starting a class action.

Read the rest.

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ONT A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOPIC: $184 MILLION – THE YEARLY COST OF THE CALIFORNIA DEATH PENALTY

We’ve known for a long time that there is a very high price tag on the California death penalty, way more than confining an inmate to life without parole.

But a new study by U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell. “Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle,” details the costs and comparisons.

Alarcon and Mitchell’s work will appear in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. But Carol Williams has an extensive article about the study in the LA Times.

Here are a few clips:

The state’s 714 death row prisoners cost $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A death penalty prosecution costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case.

The least expensive death penalty trial costs $1.1 million more than the most expensive life-without-parole case.

Jury selection in a capital case runs three to four weeks longer and costs $200,000 more than in life-without-parole cases.

The state pays up to $300,000 for attorneys to represent each capital inmate on appeal.

The heightened security practices mandated for death row inmates added $100,663 to the cost of incarcerating each capital prisoner last year, for a total of $72 million.

The study’s findings replicated many of those made by the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in 2008, and a year later, when the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California researched the death penalty’s fiscal effects ahead of public hearings on how to revise lethal injection procedures after a federal judge ruled the state’s practices unconstitutional.

As with the recommendations in Alarcon’s 2007 report, none of the remedies outlined by the commission chaired by former Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp has been adopted by lawmakers or put to the public for a vote…..

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