High court is good for business

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and corporate lobbyists long have sought sweeping "tort reform" to limit lawsuits and massive jury awards -- without much success. But in the last year, they quietly have been winning much of what they've wanted on a case-by-case basis in the Supreme Court.

With a week to go in their term, the justices have handed down a dozen rulings that sharply limit the damages that can be won in lawsuits or make it harder to sue corporations.

"The Roberts court is even better for business" than the court led for two decades by the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said Washington attorney Maureen E. Mahoney, who is a longtime friend of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and a former clerk for Rehnquist. "There is unquestionably a greater number of business cases before the court, and [the justices] are quite willing to limit damage remedies."

In February, for example, the court threw out an $80-million punitive damage verdict against cigarette maker Philip Morris, ruling that juries cannot use a single victim's suit to punish a company for harm done by its products to thousands of others.

Last month, in a similar decision, the court set aside a California jury's $55-million verdict against Ford Motor Co. arising from a rollover accident involving its Ford Explorer.

Two weeks ago, the court shielded the insurance industry from paying millions of dollars in damages for not notifying customers when they check their credit ratings.

A few days before that, the court protected employers from being sued over pay discrimination against women and minorities that occurred in past years. The 5-4 decision overturned a verdict in favor of a female supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant, saying she had failed to point to discrimination in the 180 days prior to filing her suit -- a strict statute of limitations set in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On Monday, the court threw out a massive suit alleging "an epic Wall Street conspiracy" among the nation's leading investment bankers to fix the prices of new stock offerings during the Internet boom of the late 1990s. It was the third decision this year to restrict the reach of antitrust laws.

None of these pro-business decisions came as a huge surprise. But lawyers who practice regularly before the high court say it is noteworthy that business has been winning so consistently.