Anyone that tells you that politics doesn't figure into the courts doesn't know much about what is going on in politics these days. When conservative Republicans appoint ideological judges bent doing whatever they can to help big business no matter how large the fuck up, there is a serious problem going on. The Court itself hangs on a balance now and could get worse if McCain is elected. With another Republican in the White House, it will be easier to see more awful decisions like this from now on.
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out the record $2.5 billion in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corp had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the nation's worst tanker spill.
By a 5-3 vote, the high court ruled that the punitive damages award should be slashed -- limited by the circumstances of the case to an amount equal to the total relevant compensatory damages of $507.5 million.
The justices overturned a ruling by a U.S. Court of Appeals that had awarded the record punitive damages to about 32,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others harmed by the nation's worst tanker spill.
In the majority opinion, Justice David Souter concluded the $2.5 billion in punitive damages was excessive under federal maritime law, and should be cut to the amount of actual harm.
The only harm here was done by Exxon all those years ago and the Court's decision today. Now ExxonMobil makes $2.5 billion in a matter of days, they could have easily paid the amount of damages stipulated in the lawsuit. The Supreme Court had no business taking up this case, it should have been left to the lower court. For Souter to say that there shouldn't be punitive damages is absurd. Those damages are awarded in cases that span the legal spectrum and to think that fisherman and those that live along the coast weren't traumatized by the man-made ecological disaster is preposterous.
Corporate America is chomping at the bit to see McCain in office (and nominating judges), so they can get away with whatever they see fit in order to profit at everyone else's expense.
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