YUK- Supreme Court in Divided Opinion Comes Down Against Plaintiff in Class Action

I try not to editorialize in these pages when reporting on important legal decisions. This time I am compelled. YUK!! Score a victory for the wrongdoers lobby. The President needs to appoint some pro consumer Justices before consumers lose anymore legal rights.

The  New York Times (3/28, Page B2, Wyatt, Subscription Publication, 1.68M) reports the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, “threw out a proposed class-action antitrust lawsuit against Comcast…in which a group of more than two million current and former Comcast subscribers sought to prove that the company had unfairly eliminated competition and overcharged customers.” Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said the “proposed class of Comcast subscribers failed to meet formal legal guidelines for how to certify that evidence of wrongdoing was common to the group and that damages could be measured on a classwide, rather than an individual, basis.” But the “decision evoked a harsh dissent” by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer “that accused the majority of focusing on an issue other than that on which the court had agreed to hear the case.”

        Bloomberg News (3/28, Stohr, Sherman) says the court said “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 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.”  

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