The dispute centered on the company's August 1982 "discount for cash" program, which promised station owners a price reduction to offset a new fee on credit-card sales. Exxon eliminated the price cut about seven months later, though telling dealer representatives for years that the company was still providing it, the station owners said.
Lawyers filed a federal suit in 1991 on behalf of 10,000 station owners in 34 states and the District of Columbia. In 2001, a jury awarded the plaintiffs an average of 1.3 cents a gallon for 40 billion gallons of gas sold. With interest, the total at present is roughly $1.3 billion.
In seeking a new trial, Exxon argued that the case should not have included station owners who were seeking less than $50,000, which at the time was the threshold for certain federal suits. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court in a 5-to-4 decision, said the trial judge had properly exercised "supplemental jurisdiction" over those claims because they were attached to larger ones.
Farmers Lose Irrigation Case
WASHINGTON, June 23 (AP) - Individual farmers may not sue the federal government to enforce their irrigation districts' water contracts, the justices ruled unanimously.
Two dozen farmers from the Central Valley of California had sought $32 million as compensation for water they were supposed to get under a contract between the government and the 600,000-acre Westlands Water District, the nation's largest. Instead of giving that water to the farmers, the federal Bureau of Reclamation diverted it to protect fish under requirements of the Endangered Species Act.
The government argued that its contract with the district allowed lawsuits only by the district itself, not by individual landowners who are its members. The district agreed.
Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982 "does not permit a plaintiff to sue the United States alone."