Court reopens punitive damages case
Final updates 1:10 p.m.
The Supreme Court, for the third time, agreed on Monday to review a $79.5 million punitive damages award against the giant tobacco firm, Philip Morris USA. Because the case has lingered in state and federal courts, the award, including interest, has grown to about $145 million. The case was brought by Mayola Williams, the widow of a smoker who died of cancer in 1997.
In stepping back into the dispute, the Court declined to hear Philip Morris’ new constitutional challenge to the size of the punitive verdict. Instead, the Court limited its review to the Oregon Supreme Court’s latest ruling, scuttling Philip Morris’ challenge because of a legal defect it found in the trial. Even so, the case does pose a significant constitutional conflict between the Supreme Court’s authority to have its rulings applied, and a state court’s authority to manage its own state procedural rules. The tobacco company appeal contends that the state court defied the Supreme Court’s most recent ruling, a clear victory for Philip Morris — that is, until the case got back to state court. The new appeal is Philip Morris USA v. Williams (07-1216).
The Court, in a second newly granted case, took on an issue it has chosen to bypass in the past: whether a 1972 federal law against sex bias in schools and colleges — Title IX — provides the only remedies for claims of sex discrimination. The Circuit Courts are split on whether Title IX displaces any claims of sex bias in education that parents or a child try to make under an 1871 civil rights law — so-called Section 1983. The new case involves an appeal by parents of a kingergartner in Hyannis, Mass., who claimed that an eight-year-old boy repeatedly forced her to lift her skirt or pull down her underwear. The First Circuit ruled that the parents could not win on their Title IX claim, and were barred from pursuing their constitutional claim under Section 1983. The new case is Fitzgerald, et al., v. Barnstable School Committee (07-1125).
