Corporations See Less Friendly SCOTUS Without Scalia

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia has reshaped the Supreme Court into a less friendly body for corporations looking to fight class actions, as evidenced by Dow Chemical’s decision to drop its bid for the Court to review a jury verdict against the company for participating in a price-fixing scheme to inflate the cost of urethane chemicals. The company said it acquiesced to the $835 million settlement as Scalia’s vacant seat results in “increased likelihood for unfavorable outcomes for businesses involved in class action suits.” The Court also refused to grant certiorari to Direct Digital, a firm that asked the justices to overturn an appeals court finding that plaintiffs’ affidavits are acceptable to determine class membership. “For class action detractors, it’s increasingly evident that Scalia’s absence from the Supreme Court means at least a temporary halt in the long campaign to reign in these cases – not just because Scalia won’t be pushing his colleagues to circumscribe the rights of class action plaintiffs in written opinions but because there will be less appetite to take cases to begin with,” Alison Frankel writes for Reuters.