title: SUPREME COURT DECISION Lead By Justice Ginsburg Delivers Blow To Big Business
text: Oh boy! Ginsberg woke up and is leading a decision against big business is anyone surprised by this? We d love to know your opinion.WASHINGTON   The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday issued the first decision in a series of class action cases this term that are widely viewed as attempts by business interests to shut the courthouse door to consumers and everyday plaintiffs.In a 6-to-3 opinion in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez, a case testing the limits on federal courts considering class-action disputes, the justices ruled that businesses can t just  moot  a case by simply offering to settle it with the person who first brought it   let alone if the person rejected the offer.Relying on contractual principles, Ginsburg said such offers have  no force. Like other unaccepted contract offers, it creates no lasting right or obligation,  Ginsburg said.  With the offer off the table, and the defendant s continuing denial of liability, adversity between the parties persists. That adversity matters because, under the Constitution, federal courts can only hear actual  cases  or  controversies.  But Campbell-Ewald   a marketing firm that was sued for sending unwanted mass text messages   said that requirement evaporated after it offered Jos  G mez, the lead plaintiff in the dispute, some money to make his case go away.G mez had sued Campbell-Ewald, a Navy contractor, for a text message he received from the company recruiting him to join the Navy. But because he was almost 40 at the time and he never consented to receiving the text, G mez alleged in his lawsuit that the company violated a federal law that forbids  unsolicited advertisement. But he didn t want to just go it alone   he wanted to form a class action against the firm.It was at that point that Campbell-Ewald sought to make G mez whole by simply making him an offer it thought he wouldn t resist: a sum of $1,503, or about three times what federal law allowed him to recover. G mez, however, refused to settle and said he wanted to press forward as the leader of the class action.Ginsburg said that was good enough for his claim to remain active in the courts.A person who is  a would-be class representative with a live claim of her own must be accorded a fair opportunity to show  that she can vindicate the interests of others in the class, she said.Practically, this detail is important for the vitality of class actions, which depend on the willingness of people like G mez to become the public face of a lawsuit. If this person or  class representative  somehow falls out of the case   by virtue of accepting a settlement offer or other circumstances   the whole class action runs the risk of falling apart. And not just any plaintiff is ready to act as a backup in federal court.Via: Yahoo