The Oyez Project: 2006 Term
U.S. Supreme Court Cases, presented by The Oyez Project (www.oyez.org)

• Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman (No. 05-11284)
  

  Jalil Abdul-Kabir was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. At his sentencing, Abdul-Kabir presented mitigating evidence of his destructive family background and neurological defects. The jury was instructed to give effect to all mitigating evidence by making yes-or-no determinations on Texas's two "special issues" for capital sentencing: the deliberateness of the crime and the future dangerousness of the criminal. After his sentencing, Abdul-Kabir filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal District Court, arguing that the special issues had not allowed the jury to give full consideration and effect to his mitigating evidence as required by the Supreme Court in Penry v. Johnson. The District Court denied Abdul-Kabir habeas relief, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed.

  The Fifth Circuit held that the mitigating evidence was not "constitutionally relevant," and that in any case the jury could have given it consideration as part of the "deliberateness" and "dangerousness" determinations. After the Supreme Court rejected the "constitutional relevance" test, the Fifth Circuit reaffirmed its decision that Abdul-Kabir's mitigating evidence had been given full consideration and effect under the Texas special issues. The case was consolidated with Brewer v. Quarterman No. 05-11287.

• Altadis USA, Inc. v. Sea Star Line, LLC (No. 06-606)
  

  Altadis USA, Inc. hired Sea Star Line, LLC (Sea Star) to ship a container of cigars from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Tampa, Florida. According to the contract, which was negotiated under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA), the container would travel by ship until it reached port at Jacksonville, Florida. From there, American Trans-Freight, Inc. (ATF) would truck it to Tampa. Sea Star issued a "'through' bill of lading" which held Sea Star liable for the container's safety during both the land and sea portions of its transport. The container was stolen from an ATF truck and Altadis filed a claim against Sea Star in District Court. The one-year statute of limitations for filing a COGSA claim had expired and the District Court dismissed the suit. Altadis argued that the Carmack Amendment imposed a two-year minimum statute of limitations period on liability claims relating to the transport of goods into the United States.

  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the Carmack Amendment's liability rules did not apply to the inland portion of transport because ATF did not issue a separate bill of lading. Other U.S. Courts of Appeals had ruled that the Carmack Amendment did not require a separate bill of lading to cover the inland portion of transport.

• Ayers v. Belmontes (No. 05-493)
  

  In 1981, Fernando Belmontes Jr. was convicted of the first-degree murder of Steacy McConnell. During the sentencing phase of the trial, prosecutors sought the death penalty. Belmontes's defense lawyers argued for a life term in prison, and presented evidence of his history as a victim of abuse and poverty as well as his capacity for rehabilitation as mitigating factors. Before sentencing, the California trial judge instructed the jury to consider 11 possible mitigating factors, labeled (a) through (k), which jurors are required by California law to consider. The judge read factor (k), a catch-all factor, verbatim from the statute, telling jurors to consider "[a]ny other circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime."

  After the jury sentenced Belmontes to death, he appealed to the California Supreme Court, arguing that the jury had misunderstood the ambiguous factor (k) instruction to mean that they should not consider non-crime-related mitigating factors. Since the Supreme Court has ruled that jurors must consider all mitigating evidence offered by a defendant in a capital case, this would render the conviction unconstitutional. The California Supreme Court upheld the conviction, relying on Boyde v. California, in which the Supreme Court affirmed that factor (k) is constitutional unless there is a "reasonable likelihood" that jurors misunderstood it. Belmondes appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where his death sentence was finally overturned in 2003. The Circuit Court ruled that jurors had been confused by the factor (k) instruction, which caused them to fail to consider the mitigating evidence of Belmondes's capacity for rehabilitation.

  After the Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration, the Circuit Court reaffirmed its decision in 2005. The Circuit Court held that the verbatim or "unadorned" reading of the factor (k) instruction would have misled a reasonable juror. The Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutional sufficiency of factor (k), as well as the possible retroactive applicability of the Circuit Court's holding.

• BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (No. 06-341)
  

  BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles fired African-American employee Stephen Peters. Human Resources Manager Pat Edgar decided to fire Peters in part because of a report of insubordination filed against Peters by his immediate supervisor, Cesar Grado. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claimed that Peters was a victim of invidious discrimination because Grado, an Hispanic, treated non-African American employees less harshly. EEOC filed suit against BCI on behalf of Stephens under Section 703(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination against employees. Though a District Court concluded that Grado was racially biased, it dismissed the case because the evidence failed to prove that Edgar's decision to fire Stephens was sufficiently affected by Grado's discriminatory bias.

  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decided that a jury should determine whether or not Grado's bias affected Edgar's decision to fire Stephens, and it sent the case to trial. The Tenth Circuit cited the subordinate bias theory of liability, which holds a company liable for a discriminatory firing even if the employee who made the actual decision to fire was not the employee harboring racial bias.

• Beck v. PACE International Union (No. 05-1448)
  

  During Chapter 11 liquidation proceedings, Crown Vantage, Inc. (Crown) terminated its employee pension plan and purchased an annuity for the employee participants as a replacement. The participants advocated merging the current plan into a multiemployer PACE International Union (PACE) pension plan but Crown did not investigate the possibility. The participants alleged that Crown breached its fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) by not acting "solely in the interests of the participants" (Section 1104(a)(1)). A bankruptcy court ordered Crown to maintain the plan's funds until they were distributed to the participants.

  A District Court affirmed, finding that Crown failed to consider its employees' interest. Crown appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, claiming that it did not consider the PACE plan because Section 4041 of ERISA prevents termination by way of a merger into a multiemployer plan. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court, ruling that ERISA does allow termination by way of a merger into a multiemployer plan.

• Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly (No. 05-1126)
  

  William Twombly and other consumers brought a class action lawsuit against Bell Atlantic Corp. and other telecommunications companies. Twombly alleged that the companies had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by conspiring to end competition among themselves and to stifle new competition. In the suit, Twombly claimed that the companies had agreed not to branch out into and compete in one another's territories, even though the Telecommunications Act of 1996 might have made it relatively inexpensive to do so.

  The District Court granted Bell Atlantic's motion to dismiss the suit, however, because Twombly had failed to "allege sufficient facts from which a conspiracy can be inferred." In order to sufficiently claim a Section 1 violation, the court held, the plaintiffs needed to establish a "plus factor" - a piece of evidence showing that the defendants' behavior would be against their economic self-interest unless there was a conspiratorial agreement. Twombly had not established a plus factor, the court held, because the companies' defensive behavior could have been motivated by economic factors rather than conspiracy.

  Twombly appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which reversed the lower court. The Second Circuit ruled that Twombly needed only to allege a conspiracy and specific facts that would support a Section 1 violation. Since he had alleged that the companies had engaged in suspicious "parallel conduct" and conspired to preserve monopoly conditions, his claim was sufficient and the suit could proceed.

• Bowles v. Russell (No. 06-5306