Further evidence that the United States has become a corpocracy (a state run by corporations) with two extraordinary US Supreme Court cases.
In one case, as reported here, the court ruled that a large group of individuals can't sue Wal Mart for employment discrimination. The New York Times reports: "The court's decision will not just make it harder to bring big, ambitious employment class-action cases asserting discrimination based on sex, race or other factors, legal experts said. In the majority opinion, the court set higher barriers for bringing several types of nationwide class actions against a large company with many branches. In its majority opinion, the court essentially said that if lawyers brought a nationwide class action against an employer, they would have to offer strong evidence of a nationwide practice or policy that hurt the class. In the Wal-Mart case, the court wrote that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated that Wal-Mart had any nationwide policies or practices that discriminated against women."
Of course, there are no nationwide policies! At most companies, there are equal opportunity clauses in their official documents that no one reads, and there is informal discrimination. That explains why women, blacks and Hispanics aren't in the top managerial ranks of corporate America.
The second case is the Janus ruling that basically decrees a fund's investment adviser may not be sued for securities fraud due to misstatements made in a fund's prospectus. The court tossed a lawsuit against Janus Capital Group, saying that the company's managers could not be held responsible for putting together misleading information in the prospectus. No, the statements were "made" by the Janus funds which means the funds were responsible for those statements, not Janus Capital Group.
Both decisions show the sophistry of the US courts as it bends over backwards to protect corporate interests with their "get out of jail free" cards.
no comment untill now