U.S. Supreme Court rules against ‘Judge Alex’ star

The Supreme Court today ruled against the star of the syndicated TV show “Judge Alex,” saying that an arbitrator must resolve a fee dispute over an attorney’s claim to 12% of “Judge Alex’s” earnings.

In a ruling with special significance for the entertainment industry in California, the court upheld that arbitration agreements must be honored. In a 8-1 ruling, with Judge Clarence Thomas dissenting, it held that actors and managers who signed arbitration agreements must resolve their disputes in arbitration.

Two courts in California had ruled that under the state’s Talent Agencies Act, actors may take their disputes to the state’s labor commissioner to determine whether their contract with an agent or a manager is valid. The ruling is a defeat for the TV judge, former Florida judge Alex Ferrer, who is in a dispute with a former manager.

In another decision, the millions of employees who have 401K accounts also won a potentially significant victory. In a 9-0 ruling, the court agreed that employees whose retirement accounts lose thousands of dollars because of mistakes by the administrators of funds can sue to seek a recovery of what they lost.

This decision reverses a ruling by a lower court that had thrown out a claim by a former consulting company employee who says he lost $150,000 when the administrators ignored his request to move money out of a stock fund. Two lower courts had tossed out James LaRue’s claim and ruled that federal law regulating pensions only allows claims involving the fund as a whole, not an individual account.

Disagreeing, the high court said the law does permit suits to recover losses “in a participant’s individual account.”

In two other cases, the Supreme Court gave business two big wins by shielding companies from different kinds of lawsuits and state regulations.

In one ruling, the court said the makers of medical devices cannot be sued by patients who are injured or killed, so long as those devices were approved in advance by the Food and Drug Administration. The 8-1 ruling throws out a lawsuit brought by a widow whose husband was badly hurt and later died after a balloon catheter burst in his chest. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

In the second ruling, the court shielded shippers and delivery services from state regulations that require them to check for proof of age before dropping off cigarettes or alcohol at a residence. In the age of Internet commerce, state officials want to make sure minors are not ordering illegal products for themselves. But in the 9-0 ruling, the court said a federal deregulation law protects shippers from state rules, even those designed to protect health and safety.

In both decisions, the court read federal law broadly to protect companies from juries or state regulators.

david.savage@latimes.com