Daily Archives: July 16, 2019

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS – Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. v. Jackson.

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This dude Jackson bought a water filtration system from Home Depot. He bought it on credit, and then decided he didn’t want to pay for it. He argued it was some bullshit.

Citibank sued his dead-beat ass, and Jackson was like, “Oh yeah? Two can playeth that game you motherfuckers. I’ll sue you, Home Depot, and CWS, (the people who made the water filtration system).” He argued that the all three of them were in cahoots, engaging in unfair and deceptive business practices.

Back in 2005, Congress passed and Bush signed the Class Action Fairness Act, which basically was designed to prevent abuses of class action suits, because basically lawyers are shady motherfuckers, and they would sue in areas where the courts might be more sympathetic to them. So the act allowed the federal government to step in and take jurisdiction for larger class actions to protect defendants against such abuses.

So Home Depot decided to ask for such an exemption, and asked they be removed from this suit brought forth in state court. If they had countersued in state court, they conceded that they wouldn’t have a right to ask to be removed, which was a main part of their argument. Had they voluntarily entered into state court counter-action themselves, they’d be stuck. But they didn’t countersue, they were just dragged into this shit by Jackson and wanted the hell out of it.

SCOTUS decided that Home Depot was just a defendent to a claim, not a class action, and thus, didn’t get to remove themselves from this shit using rules designed for class-actions.  5:4 decision for Jackson. The left justices plus Clarence Thomas were the majority.

The other four conservative justices thought this was some bullshit technicality shenanigans, but unfortunately for Home Depot, Justice Thomas apparently prefers Lowe’s or Menards.

Read about the case or hear oral arguments here.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS – Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority

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This dude Thacker was boating about, flying through the water like a mad man. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) were doing some work on power lines by the water, and one of those lines had fallen into the water.

The TVA had told the Coast Guard to keep these mother fucking boaters out of the area, and even announced that shit on marine radio, and the TVA even had two warning boats deployed to tell people to stay the hell out. But Thacker is one balls-to-the-wall motherfucker, and he decided to go blasting through the water, ignoring any warnings otherwise, blowing right passed the warning boats before they could tell him to stay out.

Thacker hit the power line, was injured himself, and his friend died.

So Thacker sued the TVA for negligence.

As we’ve discussed before, for some reason that I believe is entirely un-American, we have laws from protecting the government from getting sued, so here we go again, deciding when they can and can’t be.

The TVA is a private corporation doing government work. So they’re kinda weird that way. They are what’s called a “Sue and be sued” company. But, there are still exemptions for when they can and can’t be sued for some dumb reason, and this was the shit they were trying to deploy here to get out of this mess.

SCOTUS reviewed and unanimously ruled for Thacker, that he may sue the TVA despite all the rules the opposition tried to throw at him to prevent that shit.

Read about the case and hear oral arguments here.