                  ---------        2009 |
FEBRUARY 23, 2009, 11:08 A.M. ET Supreme Court Won't Hear Power Plant Case Justice Ginsburg Returns to Work After Surgery By BRENT KENDALL WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Monday a bid by a group of utility companies and industry trade groups to save certain Bush administration regulations on power plants. Meanwhile, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was back at work 18 days after undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer. Justice Ginsburg was in her typical court dress consisting of a black robe and white lace collar. Doctors gave Justice Ginsburg, 75 years old, an encouraging prognosis after they removed a small malignant tumor from her pancreas and determined that the disease had not spread to her lymph nodes or other organs. She underwent surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York on Feb. 5. The high court's move in the power-plant case wasn't a surprise because the Obama administration recently abandoned the federal government's Supreme Court appeal in the same case. Lawyers for the new administration instead said the Environmental Protection Agency would abide by a lower court ruling that threw out a Bush-era EPA rule that sought to "delist" mercury from a list of pollutants the agency is required to control at each power plant. More Court Action Supreme Court Sides With RambusThe Bush administration plan sought to create an emissions trading market under which power plants, starting in 2010, would have to buy pollution credits instead of actually cutting mercury emissions. Coal-burning utilities such as American Electric Power Co., Southern Co., and Duke Energy Corp. had lobbied for the plan so they would have the flexibility to decide how to produce the cheapest mercury reductions. To create the market, the EPA had to reverse a Clinton administration finding that mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants is a "hazardous air pollutant" under the Clean Air Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of the Columbia Circuit threw out the Bush administration's plan in February, 2008. The Supreme Court on Monday let that ruling stand without comment. Also Monday, the court refused to review a lower court ruling that allowed Volkswagen AG, which is facing a product liability lawsuit in Texas, to transfer the case out of a judicial district that is considered friendly to plaintiffs. The lawsuit alleges that design defects in the 1999 Volkswagen Golf caused catastrophic injuries to two passengers involved in a 2005 car crash in Dallas. One of the passengers, a 7-year-old girl, died, while her grandfather was paralyzed. The family involved in the crash sued Volkswagen in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas, which has a reputation for being plaintiff-friendly and for having a so-called rocket docket, in which cases move quickly through the court. The Dallas crash didn't take place in that judicial district, but the family members involved in the wreck lived in the district at the time. By the time they filed their lawsuit, two of the plaintiffs had moved to Dallas, while the girl's mother had left the state. Volkswagen argued that the case should be heard in Dallas, which isn't part of the Eastern District. In addition to the crash taking place in Dallas, the automaker noted that the car was purchased in Dallas and the witnesses to the accident lived there. A Marshall, Texas, trial judge in the Eastern District rejected Volkswagen's request to transfer the case, but a deeply divided federal appeals court overruled him. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 10-7 to transfer the case to Dallas, ruling that the trial judge abused his discretion by not doing so. In another case, the court refused to consider an appeal by Forest Laboratories Inc. that sought to overturn a lower court ruling in favor of a generic drug maker that wants to market a generic version of Forest's depression drug Lexapro. Without comment, the high court left in place an appeals court ruling that generic drug maker Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd. could sue to challenge the validity of one of Forest's Lexapro patents. Forest argued that Caraco could not bring a lawsuit because there was no legal controversy that would give the courts jurisdiction over the case. Forest said there was no legal dispute between the companies because it had agreed not to sue the generic drug maker for patent infringement. Caraco's lawsuit now goes back to the lower courts for additional proceedings. The two companies are also engaged in another lawsuit involving a different Lexapro patent. In other court action: - Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage chief and two other former city officials have failed to persuade the Supreme Court to consider setting aside their fraud convictions. The justices, in an order Monday, are letting stand Robert Sorich's conviction and 46-month prison term. Mr. Sorich and the others were found guilty of skirting laws that ban political city hiring. The federal appeals court in Chicago earlier upheld the convictions. The court rejected defense arguments that the men couldn't be convicted of criminal fraud because they didn't take bribes or kickbacks. - The court said it won't review the conviction of a Virginia man for joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate George W. Bush. The court said that it will leave undisturbed the conviction of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, despite an appeals court finding that his constitutional rights were violated when a judge allowed jurors, but not Mr. Abu Ali, to see classified evidence against him. - The justices also refused to hear an appeal from a Bosnian immigrant Marko Boskic of his conviction for lying about his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre so he could get into the U.S. Mr. Boskic complained that authorities lied to him to get his confession of taking part in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. —Siobhan Hughes and the Associated Press contributed to this article. Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@dowjones.com |