A big day for business at the US Supreme Court (tobacco, pensions, environment, health care)

[Omaha Steve]

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/06/11/PM200706111.html

A big day for business at the Supreme Court

Listen to this story: http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/marketplace/2007/06/11_mpp?start=00:00:00:59.0&end=00:00:03:20.0

The Supreme Court released four, unanimous business-related opinions today. There was some bad news for Big Tobacco. And, as Steve Henn reports, it wasn't such a good day for unions either.

TEXT OF STORY

Kai Ryssdal: Sure, there's disagreement among the nine members of the high court. But today, you couldn't find any daylight at all between 'em — the Supreme Court released four business-related opinions and it was a clean sweep.

There was some bad news for Big Tobacco. The justices ruled Phillip Morris will have to defend itself against civil fraud charges in a state court in Arkansas — not the federal venue the company wanted. State juries are more likely to hand down juicy verdicts than federal ones are.

snip

Steve Henn: If a company goes bankrupt, who gets to keep any extra cash in the pension plan?

When Crown Vantage paper was going under it closed its pension, paid its former workers a guaranteed minimum and passed along a $5 million pension surplus to the company's creditors.

Not surprisingly, Crown's union, which represented other workers and had a pension of its own, sued. The Union wanted to take over Crown's big fat company pension and merge it with its own.

Four stories also on audio link.