Court denies antitrust immunity case
on Oct 30, 2006 at 10:02 am
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge to the government’s power to prosecute a corporation that had previously been granted immunity in exchange for its cooperation in an antitrust investigation. The Court denied review of Stolt-Nielsen S.A., et al., v. U.S. (06-97, petition here). Stolt-Nielsen, a Norwegian ocean shipping firm, had provided key information for an Antitrust Division probe of alleged customer allocation and bid-rigging in the market for liquid-cargo shipping. That was part of an leniency deal that was to spare the company from prosecution. However, the Antitrust Division concluded that Stolt-Nielsen had not lived up to the bargain, lifting the immunity, and ultimately obtained an indictment. Monday’s denial of Stolt-Nielsen’s appeal was more or less telegraphed when the Court, on Aug. 21, refused to block prosecution. (UPDATE: Stolt-Nielsen later on Monday announced that it will file a motion to dismiss the indictment based upon the amnesty agreement, on Nov. 22, in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.) Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., took no part in any of the Supreme Court’s actions on the case; he had been a member of the Third Circuit Court panel that had heard the case below, but did not participate in the panel decision.
No new cases were granted review on Monday. The complete Orders List is now available here.
The Court took no action on a widely watched case involving public school students’ free speech rights. The case is Juneau School Board, et al., v. Frederick (06-278, petition here), testing whether school authorities may bar students from publicly expressing pro-drug messages during school-related events. The case involved a student who was suspended from school for displaying a banner with the message “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” during an Olympics torch rally in Juneau, Alaska, in early 2002. UPDATE: The Court will consider the case again at its private Conference on Friday, according to the electronic docket.
In one of the Court’s orders on Monday, it asked the U.S. Solicitor General for the government’s views on an ERISA preemption issue — a question of “alienation” of pension benefits when a prison warden orders a plan to send an inmate’s benefits to a prison account. The case is Cox v. DaimlerChrysler Corp. (06-273, petition here).
That case involves a longstanding practice in Michigan of restricting prison inmates’ acess to funds and to private bank accounts. The state requires inmates to reimburse the state for the costs of their confinement from their own assets, if any — including private and public pensions. Four inmates who were receiving benefits under a DaimlerChrysler Corp. pension plan declined to notify the plan to send their benefits to the prison address for deposit in their prison accounts. So, the warden sent orders to the plan to do so. The pension plan then successfully challenged that order under ERISA’s anti-alienation provision, ultimately winning in the Sixth Circuit Court.
