Corporate Controlled Supreme Court fucks America yet again

A business-friendly Supreme Court, with encouragement from the Bush administration, has strengthened the hand of companies wanting to turn away lawsuits by investors who claim they lost money because of corporate misconduct.
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Since 2000, investors filing federal class-action lawsuits alleging securities fraud have won $42 billion in damages from the business community, according to research by the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse. The Stanford study also found that in the past two years the number of class-action lawsuits filed by investors has declined.

"Clearly the environment now is difficult because many conservative judges have a negative view philosophically of class-action lawsuits," said Steven J. Toll, a plaintiffs attorney in Washington, D.C. "I hope for the benefit of investors that the pendulum shifts back again to a more rational and objective review of these cases."

One of the business community's criticisms of the court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist was that the justices did not have the interest or the appetite to take on contentious business issues. These kinds of cases have become regular fixtures on the court's docket under Chief Justice John Roberts, whose career as a private attorney had him often representing business interests before the Supreme Court.

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