This Politico report on a recent SCOTUS decision is from three weeks ago and demonstrates … well … I’m not quite sure:
In a little-noticed 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court just lodged a blow to large corporations. The rare, unanimous outcome marked a distinctly progressive pivot on a thorny jurisdictional question that has bedeviled plaintiffs in corporate liability cases for decades.
But the most significant effect of the decision might be the message it sends that the court, with its decisive 6-3 conservative majority, is not condemned to predictably partisan splits.
Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court consolidated two cases brought in connection with accidents involving vehicles manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. The plaintiffs alleged that Ford was at fault, and brought the cases in the states where the accidents occurred and the motorists had resided: Montana and Minnesota. The Montana resident was killed when a tread separated from a rear tire of her 1996 Explorer, causing the SUV to land upside down in a ditch. The Minnesota resident suffered serious brain damage when, while a passenger in a 1994 Crown Victoria, his airbag failed to deploy after the driver rear-ended a snow plow.
Ford tried to get both suits thrown out on the rationale that they could only be brought where Ford designed, manufactured or sold the cars; personal jurisdiction, as it is known, is an area of constitutional law that historically has given corporations a home-field advantage when defending product liability claims, among others. Given the court’s pro-business track record in these cases, Ford had reason to be sanguine about the outcome. Instead, the unanimous ruling departed from the court’s solidly conservative trajectory stretching back over 40 years.
So SCOTUS is slapping Big Business in the face, and that includes the entire conservative wing, with the exception of Justice Barrett, who did not hear the arguments.
Is this Chief Justice Roberts getting the conservative wing together and telling them to cool it in the interests of keeping the Court relatively non-political?
Or did Justice Kagan’s arguments simply carry the day?
This is important because a Court that pays attention to image, while not a new behavior, has to be part of a counsel’s fact-base when deciding on how to spend their clients’ or employers’ money.
On the other hand, I can certainly see requiring large corporations such as Ford to come to the consumers’ local Court. If they’re willing to sell in that jurisdiction, then they’d better be ready to be sued there as well. Yes, these are used vehicles in these particular suits, but the car manufacturer has a substantial presence in the consumers’ residential locations.
So remember, if you need to sue Big Business, you may be able to do it in the comfort of your own district – and it may be due to a desire to keep the Court looking non-political.
