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As time goes by, we can expect the Supreme Court to start letting decisions take all the action. On Monday, much attention was focused on the decision in Apple v. Pepper and others, a decision that allows a massive antitrust action against Apple to move forward. (Apple Stock took a plunge after the decision, which got lost in the din of the Dow Jones.) The case caught the eye as Judge Brett Kavanaugh sided with the four Liberal judges of the Court to allow Court to rule, 5-4, against Apple.
The theory of the lawsuit is that the 30% commission fee imposed by Apple on application developers is often passed on to consumers, which creates a higher price than the competition, and that competitors are excluded because Apple prevents iPhone owners from buying apps elsewhere than on its application. Store … Apple tried to block the lawsuit, claiming that it did not set the price on the applications and that iPhone owners were therefore not entitled to sue. "But since Congress was voted by an overwhelming majority and President Benjamin Harrison signed the Sherman Act in 1890," consumer protection against monopoly prices "is at the center of antitrust concerns," Kavanaugh said. in his majority opinion. He added: "Consumers here have bought applications directly from Apple, and they claim that Apple has used its monopoly power in the retail application market to charge higher prices than the competition."
Whoa, Nelly, look at Brett's big anti-monopoly brain! He will love the president Professor Warren.
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Nine Wise Souls' decision in the Franchise Tax Board of California case v. Hyatt was even more significant and a lot more disturbing. In another decision 5-4, which included the now customary left-right division, the Court reversed a precedent of 1979 which, as far as more intelligent legal observers than I know, never disturbed how . In summary, the 1979 case which was reversed (Nevada c. Lobby) essentially concluded that States did not enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of the courts of other States. The priceless SCOTUSBLOG has the facts of the case that Monday was before the Supreme Court for the third time.
The case stems from allegations that Gilbert Hyatt avoided California taxes by falsely claiming he had settled in Nevada. After the California Franchise Tax Board found that Hyatt owed millions of unpaid taxes, Hyatt, a Nevada citizen, sued the Nevada court, alleging fraud and other offenses. The lawsuit began in 1998. In the end, Hyatt won a nearly half a billion dollar judgment – although a complex series of appeals, including two passages to the US Supreme Court, reduced that number about $ 100,000, plus the possibility of costs.
But, as should be obvious, the decision of the Court in this case is much less important than what it actually did in its majority opinion: it rejected the doctrine of stare decisis and made a tarantella dance. (Scott Lemieux did a good job in unraveling the hocus pocus of bad faith by which the court reached its decision.) As I noted, it was a stubborn affair, but his decision had not bothered anyone for 40 years. In less than 20 minutes, Justice Clarence Thomas read the precedent in the law books. Judge Stephen Breyer, on the other hand, can see a church in the light of day.
It's one thing to ignore a case when[ies] practical opportunity to work "when" related legal principles developed to the point of no longer letting the old rule become more than a vestige of an abandoned doctrine ", or when" the facts changed so much or became so different, stealing the old rule of significant application or justification. Casey, 505 US, 854-855. It is much more dangerous to cancel a decision only because five members of a subsequent court agree with previous dissenters on a difficult legal issue. The majority has been tempted to overturn Hall's decision even though it is a well-reasoned decision that has not posed any serious practical problems during the four decades after our decision. Today's decision can only lead us to wonder which cases the Court will then annul.
Me too. And I guess women live in Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio.
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