Bloomberg Law reports that SCOTUS has changed its mind and won’t hear a case that it had agreed to hear (granted certiorari in legalese):
The U.S. Supreme Court sent a clear signal on Nov. 17: No more bait-and-switch tactics.
The court “dismissed as improvidently granted” — or “DIG”ged — an antitrust case involving billions of dollars and household names like Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, Visa Inc. v. Osborn, U.S., No. 15-961, dismissed 11/17/16.
The court infrequently DIGs cases, and even more infrequently explains why.
But there was no mistake why the court tossed the the Visa case.
After having persuaded the court to grant certiorari on one issue, the “petitioner ‘chose to rely on a different argument’ in their merits briefing,” the court said. “The Court, therefore, orders that the writ in this case be dismissed as improvidently granted.”
The explanation suggests that the court is trying to “deter and shape” future practice in the high court, Michael Solimine of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, Cincinnati, told Bloomberg BNA.
Or, as the late-Justice Antonin Scalia put it in a 2015 case, the court was trying “to deter future snookering.”
Billions of dollars possibly lost because those executing the appeal engaged in a dubious legal practice. I’ll bet that doesn’t go down well at the office, unless this was considered a very long shot. Big, big business doesn’t litigate with regard to the conceptst of justice, only with regard to the amount of money involved. When billions are involved, what’s a few million to lawyers who think this’ll work?
A pity entities with little concept of justice are still granted partial rights as persons. I still await Apple’s accession to a seat on SCOTUS. Say, maybe I should write a letter to President-elect Trump suggesting same …
