High Court Action: Day 1

Oct. 2
, 2000 -- Exxon Mobil Loses Appeal Fla. Prayer Ruling Set Aside ‘Norm’ and ‘Cliff’ Can Sue Boy Loses Suspension Fight Court: Law Exempts Bisexual Harassers

Court Lets Valdez Award Stand

The Supreme Court today refused to free Exxon MobilCorp. from having to pay $5 billion in damages for the 1989 ExxonValdez oil spill in Alaska, the nation’s worst ever.

The high court, acting without comment, letstand the award stemming from the tanker spill that polluted morethan 1,000 miles of shoreline, killed tens of thousands of birdsand marine mammals and disrupted fishing.

The Exxon order was among dozens released by the court on thefirst day of its new term.

Lawyers for Exxon Mobil had urged the justices to throw out thepunitive-damages award on grounds of irregularities during jurydeliberations.

In one of several challenges to the $5 billion award imposed bya federal jury in 1994, Exxon Mobil attacked the behavior of DonWarrick, a court bailiff who escorted the jury and served food toits members during five months of trial and deliberations inAnchorage.

Warrick admitted that in a conversation with one of the ExxonValdez trial jurors he pulled out his gun and removed one of itsbullets before saying another juror — one holding out againstmaking a punitive-damages award — should be put “out of hermisery.”

Warrick, who said he was only joking, was fired. He died in1996.

The Exxon Valdez hit a charted reef in Prince William Sound inMarch 1989 and spilled 11 million gallons of Alaska crude oil.

School Prayer Ruling Set Aside

The court also set aside a ruling that letpublic school students in a Florida county choose a class member togive a prayer or other message at high school graduations.

The justices today ordered a federal appeals court torestudy the case in light of their decision last June to barstudent-led prayers at public high school football games. Thejustices said such prayers violated the constitutionally requiredseparation of government and religion.

In 1992, the justices prohibited clergy-led prayers at publicschool graduations.

Invocations and benedictions were allowed at Duval County, Fla.,public school graduations before the 1992 ruling.

In 1993, school officials adopted a new policy letting highschool seniors decide whether to choose a fellow student to give a“brief opening and/or closing message” at graduation. The studentwould decide the message’s content with no review by schoolofficials.

A group of students and their parents sued in 1998, saying thepolicy amounted to a government establishment of religion, barredby the Constitution’s First Amendment.A federal judge upheld the policy. A three-judge panel of the11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, but the full appealscourt ruled for the school district last March.

Cheers Case Moves Ahead

In other action, the court let “Norm” and“Cliff” continue with their lawsuit against the studio thatproduced the television show Cheers.

Without comment, the court today rejected an appeal fromParamount Pictures and Host International.

Actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger filed suit after thestudio granted Host a license to set up Cheers bars in airportsaround the world.

Some of the bars feature two life-size, robotic customers named“Hank” and “Bob.” One of the robots is heavy; the other wears a Postal Service uniform.

Wendt played the overweight barfly Norm on the show.Ratzenberger played Cliff the mailman. They contend the robotsviolated their rights of publicity, which give people exclusivecontrol over the use of their likeness or voice for profit.

Boy Loses Court Fight

A Kansas youth suspended from school for threedays after he drew a picture of a Confederate flag lost his high court appeal today.

The court, without comment, turned away arguments that thesuspension violated the youth’s freedom of speech and otherconstitutionally protected rights.

T.J. West was a seventh-grader at Derby Middle School inSedgwick, Kan., when in spring 1998 he made a 4-by-6 inch sketch ofthe Confederate flag during a math class. West later told hisassistant principal a friend had urged him to draw the flag, andthat he knew what it was but not what it meant.

West also knew drawing the flag violated a “racial harassmentand intimidation” policy the school district had adopted afterincidents of racial tension in 1995. The policy banned, among otherthings, students from possessing “any written material, eitherprinted or in their own handwriting, that is racially divisive orcreates ill will or hatred.”

Married Couple Loses Appeal

The court also rejected the appeal of amarried couple who say they were sexually harassed at work by thesame supervisor, letting stand a ruling that said a key federal lawdoes not apply to bisexual harassers.

The court, acting without comment today, turned away theappeal of Steven and Karen Holman, who work together in themaintenance department of the Indiana Department of Transportation.

They sued the state and the department in 1997 over the allegedconduct of their supervisor, shop foreman Gale Uhrich.

In the lawsuit, Karen Holman alleged that Uhrich had beenharassing her since late 1995 — touching her body, standing tooclosely and asking her to go to bed with him.

Her husband alleged that Uhrich had begun in the summer of 1995to ask him for sexual favors.

Both individuals also alleged that Uhrich retaliated against them forrejecting his advances.

The lawsuit invoked a federal law known as Title VII of theCivil Rights Act of 1964, which bans on-the-job discriminationbecause of someone’s sex.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.