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Sunday, October 12, 2008
Courts - "U.S. Supreme Court Is Asked to Fix Troubled West Virginia Justice System"
Adam Liptak of the NY Times reports today in a story that begins:
WASHINGTON — The justice system in West Virginia is broken and the United States Supreme Court should take steps to fix it, according to a pile of briefs in three cases awaiting the court’s attention.More from the story:The chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court lost an election in May, after pictures of him vacationing in Monte Carlo surfaced in the newspapers. He was with a powerful coal-company executive who had business before the court.
A second justice has called the executive, Don L. Blankenship, stupid, evil and a clown who was “trying to buy influence like buying candy for children.” That justice, Larry V. Starcher, has disqualified himself only selectively from cases involving Mr. Blankenship’s company, Massey Energy.
A third justice, Brent D. Benjamin, won his seat with the help of more than $3 million from Mr. Blankenship but has refused to disqualify himself from cases involving Massey, and twice joined a 3-to-2 majority throwing out a $50 million verdict against the company.
The United States Supreme Court is likely to announce this week whether it will hear the first of the cases, about whether the Constitution’s due process clause requires Justice Benjamin to step aside in the $50 million Massey case.
The case, Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Company, No. 08-22, has attracted supporting briefs from the American Bar Association and several other groups urging the court to hear the case.
“If the public believes that judges can be bought,” said Keith R. Fisher, a lawyer for the bar association, “that is really poisonous and undermines public confidence in an independent judiciary.”
The respondents in the second case, Massey Energy v. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, No. 08-218, are also represented by Mr. Olson [Theodore B. Olson]. His brief is due Oct. 22, and he said it was premature to discuss what it would say about Justice Starcher.The petition in that case and a third one, NiSource v. Estate of Tawney, No. 08-219, also attack a distinctive aspect of West Virginia justice: companies hit with enormous punitive damages awards there have no right to an appeal.
Only two states, West Virginia and Virginia, do not guarantee at least one level of appellate review in civil cases. But Virginia caps punitive damages at $350,000.
West Virginia was responsible for three of the seven largest verdicts in 2007, according to The National Law Journal. Yet when two of those verdicts — one for some $400 million, the other for about $220 million — reached the West Virginia Supreme Court, the justices declined to hear appeals.
Andrew L. Frey, a lawyer for Massey, said the failure to allow at least one complete appeal violated due process.
“The risk of error if you leave it to a single judge, particularly an elected judge with a local constituency to accommodate, is too great,” Mr. Frey said.
It is not at all clear, however, that the Constitution guarantees a right to an appeal in a civil case. In criminal cases, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said there is no constitutional right to an appeal. And the relatively cursory review provided by the West Virginia Supreme Court over whether to hear an appeal at all may satisfy any constitutional requirement that there be appellate review.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 12, 2008 11:59 AM
Posted to Courts in general