Cal Biz Lit

No Damage Suit Against Auto Makers For Causing Global Warming

Back when I was in law school in the 1970's, there was a fella named Jerry Brown, got himself elected governor of California.  He was disparagingly referred to as “Governor Moonbeam.”  He eschewed the perks of office, living in a small, barely furnished apartment in downtown Sacramento. Instead of riding in a limo or town car, he rode in a used Pontiac Satellite   (it turned out he had identical used cars in different parts of the state).  A lot of business interests felt he wrecked the state’s courts during that era, and although I’m not prepared to agree, there were certainly a good many off-the wall appellate decisions during that era (my favorite:  Bigbee v. Pacific Tel. & Tel. Co. (1983) 34 Cal.3d 49 (Findlaw subscr. req'd), finding a legal duty on the part of the telephone company not to place a pay phone booth where a drunk driver might jump the curb and run into it).

Anyway, Jerry had a notoriously short attention span.  He ran for president three times times, chaired the California Democratic party, ran for the senate, ran kind of a zen-like think tank, operated a public radio show, then ran for and served two terms as Mayor of Oakland.  Most recently, he ran for and was elected Attorney General, an office he’s held since the first of this year.

As Attorney General, Jerry inherited a case (brought by his predecessor, Bill Lockyer) against the big six auto makers, contending that they were guilty of nuisance and owed the State of California bazillions in damages for causing global warming.  And if that weren’t enough of a reach, instead of filing it in San Francisco, Alameda or Los Angeles state courts, where there are some judges who might go for this sort of thing, Lockyer filed the case, and Jerry prosecuted it, in the Federal Northern District.  To try to create jurisdiction, they cooked up the theory that there was a federal tort cause of action for common law nuisance.  I haven’t yet checked to see who’s the lucky deputy AG who got saddled with that wonderful argument.

More after the jump.

What Does American Business Think About the Golden State?

The US Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform is out with its annual state-by-state rankings of "state liability systems."  I'm not sure this is the right name for it -- it's more a combination of rankings of systems, the players (i.e., judges and juries) and outcomes.  Nonetheless, it will come as no surprise that California doesn't fair well in the eyes of in-house counsel.  Overall, California ranked sixth worst (or 45th best, depending on your level of optimism), ahead of only Illinois, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia. 

More after the jump.