Supreme Bastards

I dedicate the title of this post to the six utterly heartless individuals on the U.S. Supreme Court who recently ruled that 81-year-old James Stone, a retired engineer who once worked at Rockwell International’s Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, may not collect a penny of a $4.2 million judgment against the company for fraud connected to environmental cleanup.

Here is the summary from the web site of the False Claims Act Legal Center (the act under which Stone filed suit)…

Jim Stone and the U.S. Government won a $4.2 million FCA jury verdict against Rockwell International in 1999. In 2002, Rockwell appealed and lost. Rockwell asked for a rehearing and lost for a third time. Now, almost 20 years after first blowing the whistle, the Supreme Court has now decided (PDF) that Jim Stone is not an original source (never mind what the U.S. Department of Justice says) and is not eligible for a relator's share in the case.

Jim Moorman, President of Taxpayers Against Fraud, notes that the effect of the Court's decision will be to "Make an already difficult thing -- blowing the whistle -- even harder."

The Supremes ruled against Stone because, according to their timeline, Stone had already retired before Rockwell (now part of Boeing) started filing false reports concerning the supposed cleanup, and thus in the eyes of Scalia (and you KNEW he would speak for the majority in this), Stone lacked "direct and independent knowledge of the information upon which his allegations were based."

Well, Stone had to know something, or else he never would have come forward, right?

There’s no question about whether or not Rockwell was guilty in the case – they were. The only question is whether or not Stone was entitled to any of the damages Rockwell must pay. And the only two Supremes of the eight who decided in this case who seemed to get this right (Stephen Breyer did not rule) are John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who supported Stone because, though he had apparently retired before the false reports were issued, his claim led to a judgment against his former company.

As for the other six, I expected Scalia, Alito, Hangin’ Judge J.R. and Silent Clarence Thomas to go along for this ride, but I honestly thought Souter and especially Kennedy knew better (more fool me, I guess).

As the Inquirer notes in this account…

The outcome was cheered by business groups that wanted the court to limit whistle-blowers in false-claims lawsuits. Since Congress reinvigorated the Civil War-era law in 1986, those suits have returned $11 billion to the government. Recent high-profile cases include settlements with leading pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), a leading congressional supporter of whistle-blower claims, said lawmakers should consider changes to the False Claims Act to make sure people are rewarded when they uncover wrongdoing.

"The Supreme Court has made it even more difficult to get to the bottom of waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money," Grassley said.

The Bush administration sided with Stone, arguing that it was in the government's interest to encourage whistle-blowers, even though the government keeps more money now that Stone has lost.

Hartley Alley, a Colorado-based lawyer who represented Stone, said the decision failed to recognize the importance of Stone's actions at Rocky Flats, now a Superfund cleanup site.

The company pleaded guilty in 1992 to violating federal environmental laws.

How ridiculous is it, by the way, that the most business-friendly presidential administration we’ve ever seen (and government in total when the Repugs owned Congress) now is acting like it gives a fig about the rights of you and me after it has spent all of this time giving its benefactors everything they could possibly want?

So now, James Stone is retired, trying to live on a pension and savings that have probably long since been exhausted due to court costs, and he may die broke. Further, as Grassley and Moorman noted, you KNOW this judgment will discourage others from coming forward.

What country am I living in again?