Supreme Court turns away class-action suit against Comcast

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court today turned away a class-action lawsuit against cable provider Comcast Corp., in a decision that could make it harder to file those types of lawsuits in federal court.

The high court overturned a lower-court decision to certify as a class customers who say the company's monopoly in parts of the Philadelphia area allowed it to raise prices unfairly.

Justice Antonin Scalia said in a 5-4 decision the customers need to be able to show that they can tie a single theory of how they were harmed to a specific calculation of damages for class certification. The Comcast subscribers had a model that would have shown damages, but it showed $875 million of damages done under four different theories.

Only one of their theories was accepted by the lower courts, so there is no showing of how much in damages was attributable to that theory, Justice Scalia said.

"It is clear that, under the proper standard for evaluating certification, respondents' model falls far short of establishing that damages are capable of measurement on a classwide basis," said Justice Scalia, who was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the dissent jointly for themselves, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. In an unusual move, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg read parts aloud in the courtroom.