U.S. Supreme Court lets Equifax tax ruling stand
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from credit bureau Equifax Inc. from what it considers an adverse tax ruling in Mississippi.
The nation’s high court Monday let stand a ruling by the Mississippi court.
The appeal is a reaction to a 2013 Mississippi Supreme Court decision that Equifax had to prove that it didn’t earn any taxable income in the state. The state Department of Revenue examined Equifax’s income and allocated some to Mississippi, ruling it owed taxes and penalties.
The Mississippi court upheld the Revenue Department’s calculation of the company’s taxes based on revenue earned in Mississippi, thus increasing its tax liability from zero to over $700,000, according to court documents.
The U.S. Supreme Court had no comment on its decision.
High court turns down California oyster farmer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a popular oyster farm in Northern California that is facing closure.
The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place lower court rulings against Drakes Bay Oyster Co.
The company operates in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to renew its lease when it expired in 2012. Salazar said the waters of Drakes Estero should be returned to wilderness status.
Lower courts have allowed the oyster farm to keep operating while the case was pending.
The case is Drakes Bay Oyster Co. v. Jewell, 13-1244.
Court won’t allow Madoff trustee to sue major banks
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court will not let the trustee working to recover money for Bernard Madoff’s investors sue major financial institutions for their role in Madoff’s massive fraud.
The court refused Monday to hear an appeal from trustee Irving Picard, who wants to pursue tens of billions of dollars from UBS AG, HSBC Bank PLC and other institutions.
Picard, as trustee for the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, has brought claims in bankruptcy court alleging that the institutions were complicit in Madoff’s vast pyramid scheme because they provided him with financial services while ignoring obvious signs he was a con artist. A federal appeals court ruled that Picard doesn’t have legal standing to make claims against the financial institutions that Madoff’s burned customers could make themselves.
U.S. court rejects Google appeal in snooping case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Google’s appeal of a ruling that it pried into people’s online lives through their Wi-Fi systems as part of its drive to collect information for its Street View mapping project.
The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place a ruling that Google employees violated the federal wiretap law when they rolled through residential streets with car cameras to shoot photos for Street View.
The federal appeals court in San Francisco said the information picked up from unencrypted Wi-Fi signals included emails, usernames, passwords, images and documents.
Google had argued that it did not run afoul of the wiretap law because data transmitted over a Wi-Fi network is a radio communication that is readily accessible to the public.
U.S. court rejects Arab Bank’s plea in terror suits
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal to lift sanctions imposed by a judge on Arab Bank, PLC in lawsuits seeking to hold the bank partially responsible for terrorist acts in the Middle East.
The high court let stand a lower court ruling penalizing the Jordan-based bank for not turning over financial records. Survivors and relatives of victims of terrorist attacks in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza between 1995 and 2004 claim in lawsuits that the institution supported terror groups by providing financial services to them.
The bank said turning over the records would break the law in other countries.
But a judge imposed sanctions that would make it easier for the plaintiffs to prove their case and recover treble damages.
The case is Arab Bank v. Linde.
U.S. court won’t hear dispute over fuel standard
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear a challenge to California’s first-in-America mandate requiring fuel producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The justices on Monday turned away appeals from fuel makers that say the law discriminates against out-of-state producers.
The mandate requires petroleum refiners and fuel distributors to make cleaner-burning fuels for the California market.
Out-of-state oil refiners and ethanol companies say the law provides an unfair advantage to in-state producers by giving a higher “carbon-intensity score” to fuels transported from other states.
The state says the law simply offers incentives for companies that make cleaner-burning fuels.
A U.S. district judge agreed with the challengers. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, saying the law gives all fuel makers options to get their product to market.
Aereo suspends its service after unfavorable ruling
NEW YORK (AP) — Online-streaming service Aereo Inc. is temporarily closing down its operation, three days after it was dealt an unfavorable ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps,” Aereo’s Chief Executive Officer Chet Kanojia wrote in a letter to customers posted on its website Saturday.
“The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over the air programming belongs to the American public and we believe you should have the right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home, on top of your television or in the cloud.”
The Supreme Court dealt Aereo, backed by Barry Diller, a major setback on Wednesday in ruling that the television-over-the-Internet service operates much like a cable TV company. As a result, the service violates copyright law unless Aereo pays broadcasters licensing fees for offering TV stations to customers’ tablets, phones and other gadgets.
But although the Supreme Court expressed its thinking on the law, it’s the U.S. District Court in New York that must issue a preliminary injunction stopping the service, as requested by broadcasters.
Court to weigh government duty to try bias cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a dispute over the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s duty to try and settle charges of job discrimination before filing lawsuits against employers.
The issue has riled business groups as the Obama administration has aggressively stepped up enforcement of the nation’s anti-discrimination laws.
The justices agreed to hear an appeal from an Illinois mining company that was sued by the EEOC for failing to hire qualified female job applicants. The government alleges that Mach Mining has never hired any female miners since it began operations in 2006 despite getting applications from many qualified women.
The company says the lawsuit should be thrown out because the EEOC didn’t try hard enough to negotiate a settlement before going to court. The Obama administration claims it is up to the EEOC — not the courts — to decide whether terms of a settlement are acceptable.
A federal judge agreed to review whether the EEOC’s attempt to settle the case was “sincere and reasonable,” but the government objected. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, saying a company could not raise ineffective settlement effort as a defense.
Federal law does require the EEOC to try to stop illegal employment practices by “informal methods of conference, conciliation and persuasion.” But it also allows the commission to file a lawsuit if it has been unable to reach a conciliation agreement “acceptable to the commission.”
Appeals courts have long been split as to how deeply to probe the EEOC’s settlement efforts. Some require a minimal level of “good faith,” while other courts perform a more thorough analysis. But the 7th Circuit was the first appeals court to rule that employers cannot try to dismiss EEOC lawsuits by claiming conciliation efforts were lacking. The court said that would undermine the agency’s law enforcement goals and tempt employers into dragging out settlement talks.
The case has drawn interest from the business community. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups have filed a brief in the case arguing that the EEOC’s recent enforcement strategy has been “sue first and negotiate later.”
The Obama administration had also urged the court to take up the case and resolve the split among appeals courts over what role settlement talks should have when litigation begins.
The Supreme Court will reconsider the case, Mach Mining, LLC v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 13-1019, when its new term begins this fall.
