Senate Judiciary Hearing To Scrutinize Wal-Mart And Other Supreme Court Rulings

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on class actions, arbitration and securities litigation will come under Senate scrutiny next week during a hearing called by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)

Leahy has made clear on several occasions that he is unhappy with the Court’s rulings, particularly in cases pitting consumers against corporations.

The hearing, scheduled for June 29, will examine how three decisions “will impact Americans’ access to justice and affect corporate behavior,” according to the hearing announcement.

The three decisions—all of which were victories for the companies sued—are: Wal-Mart v. Dukes, Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. Previous hearings have analyzed the justices’ rulings in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, a gender discrimination case; Gross v. FBL Financial Services, an age discrimination case; and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a campaign finance case.

Scheduled to testify at the hearing is Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a class-action, gender discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees in which the court decided that that Wal-Mart’s female employees did not have enough in common to pursue their national class action. Also testifying at the hearing will be employment discrimination scholar Prof. Melissa Hart of the University of Colorado Law School, and Andrew Pincus, partner at Mayer Brown, who represented AT&T Mobility in that class action arbitration challenge.

Comments

[Lionel]

Many valid points. Some balanced, others biased. But the holding was ultimately correct in my view. Regardless, the system works. The Court approves and interprets its procedural rules. The substantive claims are not denied, just the procedural tool of a mega-class action. Chances are the remedies for any proven discrimination would be better for the plaintiffs if it were not tried in the aggregate as a class action.

[bob]

@Keesstint, you seem confused as to how class actions work.

If a woman wanted to bring an individual action, she could have opted out of the class action. If not, she would be included in the class, and if it had been successful, she would have received an award of damages.

[Judge NC Naidu]

The days of legislating from the bench are over. The "least dangerous branch" is at least in a position to be the last of the three dangerous branches of "government" that we want, wanted and will ever want.

Go figure !

[Bill]

Happy to hear, consumer rights have been going the wrong direction.

[Brattleboro, VT Conservative]

Pat Leahy ran virtually unopposed last year, yet he raised $6,447,971; $893,113 from lawyers; another $517,256 from Hollywood types. He worries about protecting his brethren and contributors, not consumers.

[Grizzled]

The Wal-Mart decision appears to be grossly misunderstood. In fact, the decision was UNANIMOUS as to the unwieldy aspect of the suit; all the justices agreed that proof of discrimination required a common nexus [causation] that was simply not apparent in this mega-class.

Where the justices split along predictable party/philosophy lines [5-4] was the Democrats' preference for having the case remanded to allow the lower courts to determine whether that nexus existed, and the Republicans' decision to short-sheet that process and simply declare no such nexus could exist.

Bottom line: the members of a class must be able to demonstrate a substantial common cause of their injuries; not a novel idea. I think the majority Republicans overstepped the bounds a bit, but I am persuaded that the outcome either way would be basically the same [i.e., on remand, I think a lower court would have concluded that many, if not most, of the plaintiffs could NOT show a common nexus].

Wal-Mart has a well-deserved reputation as a pond scum employer [forced off-the-books overtime; gaming the system to shift its employees' health care costs onto the taxpayer, etc.] over a long period of years. However, the subject of this suit is another matter and has to be dealt with as such.

[George E. Bourguignon, Jr.]

Will these hearings amount to anything? Will the Senate want to changer the law?

[Keesstint]

Leahy is a panderer. The WalMart ruling was actually a win for women because the class action trial lawyers were looking to lock them all up in a class action that would line the lawyers' pockets but provide no jury damage awards to any women. If a woman has in fact been discriminated against by WalMart (and that seems unlikely) then she can sue, get a jury trial and get all the damages and individual action allows. They would not have stood to benefit from this unwieldy class action that would go on for decades, to the benefit of the lawyers only. These critics like Professor Melissa Hart are too stupid or too blind to see that.

[4Life]

Look regardless of peoples position, it would seem to be unrealistic that in the Wal-Mart case that women at thousands of different stores were systematically discriminated against. The court was correct and sooner then later we must require equitable balance between discriminated parties and the companies that truly discriminate against these folks.

Why would a person who might have forgone a $0.35 raise due to mangers discrimination suddenly be entitled to 1000 times the individuals base income.
The US occupational handbook states that retail jobs are the lowest paying jobs So come on enough is enough

As a Democrat it is foreseeable to evaluate and question the fact that a majority of Wal-Mart's employees are labeled part time employees to avoid having to pay for benefits these polices should be looked at in the larger context of things

[Tom Conway]

Yeah, the trial lawyer lobby needs more ways to extort money from companies just by showing statistical differences.

[commonsense]

You can't rationally bundle people together in different positions, regions, and areas of responsibility who have been given negative reviews, fired, laid off, or denied advancement and reasonably assume it's just because of their gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation or any other single common factor.

[THE KAT]

DON'T LIKE THE SUPT CT DECISIONS? YOU CONTROL THEIR PURSE EVERY YEAR ON C-SPAN I SEE TWO OR MORE SUPT CT JUSTICES JUSTIFYING THEIR BUDGET. GET SOME ANSWERS CONGRESS THAT'S WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS WANTED.

[@PatientTortReport]

Glad to hear, this is great news...a step towards consumer protection which unfortunatley took at least 2 steps backward this week. I hope they discuss the Supreme's decision in Pliva v. Mensing as well. The decision was equally as anti-consumer as the others.

[Tom]

that's just where that case belongs -- in the legislature.