This is a fucking joke. And of course, SCOTUS has made rulings in recent years designed to make it almost impossible to meet the standard for a class-action lawsuit. Justice!
Comcast (CMCSA) Corp., the nation’s largest cable-television company, doesn’t have to defend against an $875 million antitrust lawsuit on behalf of as many as 2 million Philadelphia-area customers, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.
The justices, voting 5-4 to reverse a lower court, said the case against Comcast was too unwieldy to proceed as a single class-action lawsuit.
The Philadelphia-based company was accused of monopolizing its hometown market. The suing customers said Comcast swapped territories and subscribers with competitors to ensure it could control the market and charge higher prices. Comcast has denied the allegations.
The high court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the customers didn’t meet requirements for outlining a common method that could be used to determine monetary damages for each of the thousands of individual parties to the lawsuit.
Proof about a common methodology for measuring damages is needed before the case can proceed as a class-action suit covering many individual claims, the court said. The customers fell short when they produced a general theory about alleged overcharges from lack of competition without more detailed information about the impact of the specific antitrust allegation in the lawsuit, the court ruled.
Hat tip to John Yannone
Some say that we are living in a Constitutional Monarchy with the Supreme Court acting as the King. Our republic has broken down completely. It’s time to start all over again.
“…too unwieldly to proceed…”
Good God. The bankstahs get “too big to fail”; everybody else gets “too unwieldy to proceed”.
The Supreme Court, ladies and gentlemen. Sometimes known as “The Corporate Whores”.