The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the antitrust laws do not apply to the process of selling new stocks after their initial offering on stock markets. The Court said it could not accept a suggestion by the U.S. Solicitor General for avoiding a conflict between enforcement of the antitrust laws and the laws regulating securities transactions. The case involved claims of an antitrust conspiracy by underwriters to control trading in newly issued stocks. The vote was 7-1, with Justice Stephen G. Breyer writing for the majority. Justice John Paul Stevens was in the majority on result only; he expressed different reasons for the outcome. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy took no part in Credit Suisse Securities v. Billing (05-1157).
In Monday’s orders, the Court agreed to add one new case for decision next Term: a case testing the rights of an individual taking part in a retirement plan to recover money losses in his or her pension account because of faulty management by plan administrators. The Solicitor General, asked earlier for the government’s views, urged the Court to hear and decide the case of LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates , 06-856. Earlier posts on this case can be found here and here.
In the second decision of the day on the merits, the Court ruled in Brendlin v. California (06-8120) that a passenger in a car stopped on the road by a police officer has a right to challenge the legality of the stop, under the Fourth Amendment. The Court was unanimous, with Justice David H. Souter writing.
In the third and final merits decision this morning, the Court ruled that the NInth Circuit Court had no jurisdiction to hear an appeal on when a foreign company doing some business in the U.S. is to be treated as an organ of a foreign government, and thus entitled to have legal claims against it heard in federal, not state, court. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the 7-2 decision in Powerex Corp. v. Reliant Energy Services (05-85). The appeal by the Canadian energy company argued that a federal appellate court had the authority to review a federal judge’s order sending a lawsuit against the foreign firm back to state court for trial.
Among cases denied review on Monday was Barbour v. Allen (06-10605), a case testing whether a state has a constitutional duty to provide legal aid to poor inmates on death row, to help them challenge convictions and sentences in state court after the verdict is final. (Amy Howe discussed the case at greater length in this post.)
The Court also declined to return — for the ninth time — to a review of the death penalty procedures that Texas actually stopped using in 1991. The case was Quarterman v. Nelson (06-1254), in which the Fifth Circuit Court essentially cast aside much of its modern jurisprudence on the role that mitigating evidence must be allowed to have in capital sentencing proceedings. The state’s appeal and the background of the case were discussed in this post.
In two cases with major ramifications for businesses operating in multi-state markets, the Court refused to hear constitutional challenges to a state’s imposition of corporate income and franchise taxes on out-of-state businesses that have no physical presence in the state, but do have some customers inside the state. The cases were FIA Card Services v. West Virginia Tax Commissioner (06-1228), a case in which Justice Breyer declined to take part, and Lanco Inc. v. Direction of Taxation, New Jersey (06-1236). The cert. papers in these cases are here.
Two other cases denied review were Tamashiro v. Hawaii Department of Human Services (06-1267, cert. papers), involving a claim by blind vendors of a right to sue state and local government for denying them a preference in operating stands or vending machines in non-federal public buildings, and Cox v. DaimlerChrysler (06-273), on whether it violates ERISA for a state to arrange to take 90 percent of a prison inmate’s pension benefits to help defray the costs of imprisonment. The Solicitor General, asked by the Court for the government’s views, had urged the Court to bypass the appeal by Michigan’s state attorney general, Mike Cox. We earlier discussed the case here.
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