Posted on 03/26/2002 1:55:27 AM PST by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - Should the descendants of black slaves be paid reparations by companies that may have profited from the slave trade? Yes, according to a New York activist who is poised to file a lawsuit in federal district court on Tuesday.
The class action lawsuit by plaintiff Deadria Farmer-Paellman will reportedly allege that Aetna, Inc., CSX Transportation and Fleet Bank were "unjustly enriched" by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings."
Two years ago, Farmer-Paellman exposed Aetna's financial ties to the institution of slavery, resulting in a public apology from the insurance giant. Aetna, founded in 1853, had insured Southern slave owners against the death of their slaves.
Farmer-Paellman is not alone in her crusade for reparations. A number of prominent black activists, legislators and lawyers have called for such payments in order to make up for alleged disparities in employment, health care, income and education. Among those supporting the idea is Johnnie Cochran, O.J. Simpson's defense attorney; Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
Aetna and CSX downplayed the chances of a reparations lawsuit succeeding and defended their respective outreach efforts to black Americans.
"We do not believe a court would permit a lawsuit over events which, however regrettable, occurred hundreds of years ago," said Fred Laberge, Aetna assistant vice president of public relations. "These issues in no way reflect Aetna today.
"Over the past 20 years," Laberge continued, "Aetna has invested more than $36 million in the African American community. Our company has embraced diversity, and we are proud of our record of employing a diverse workforce and supporting diverse causes."
CSX Transportation issued a blunt reply to the pending lawsuit.
"The lawsuit to be filed in federal court in New York City against CSX and other corporations demanding financial reparations is wholly without merit and should be dismissed," read a written statement issued by the company.
"The claimants named CSX because slave labor was used to construct portions of some U.S. rail lines under the political and legal system in place more than a century before CSX was formed in 1990," the company complained. "Courtrooms are the wrong setting for this issue."
Reparations critics have said the movement is based more on politics and monetary greed than on legitimate legal claims. Washington, D.C. legal scholar Mark Behrens said the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed as a legal claim.
"What standing do the current plaintiffs have to sue for damages that allegedly may have occurred 150 years ago?" asked Behrens, who is a partner in the law firm Hook Hardy & Bacon.
In a class action lawsuit, Behrens explained, plaintiffs must show they have been injured, that they have suffered common injuries, and that they are representative of the people on whose behalf they are suing.
"For the people who may be alive today and are descendents [of slaves], there just seems to be a lot of threshold questions they may have to meet," said Behrens. "Despite the obvious inhumanities of slavery, ... I think one of the problems will be challenging a system that was wrong but at the time was legal."
Plaintiffs will face other challenges in bringing their case, said Behrens, including statutes of limitation (long since passed) and the difficulty of showing a common injury suffered by slave descendants.
"Whatever claims they are alleging, are too remote or attenuated from the direct conduct of slavery to be able to have a legal claim," said Behrens, who predicted the suit would be dismissed or, perhaps, settled out of court.
Supporters of black reparations have been buoyed by the successful effort of Holocaust survivors and their heirs to get reparations from companies that benefited from the forced labor of Jews in the 1930s and '40s.
The black reparations movement itself has had a few non-financial success stories so far. In addition to Aetna's 2000 apology, a few state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for reparations, as has the United Nations conference on racism, which was held in South Africa in September 2001. Conyers has introduced reparations legislation during the past decade, but Congress has never voted on the bill.
See Earlier Stories:
Slavery Reparations a Main Topic at CBC Conference
Slavery Discussions Hit a Snag at Racism Conference
Paying for Slavery: How Could it be Done?
Paying for Slavery: Why Now?
E-mail a news tip to Christine Hall.
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The fact that Conyers keeps bringing up the ultimate pork barrel project is all the reason one needs to keep the GOP in control of the House.
If you wait 200 years to file suit, even on a claim that would habe been legitimate, you lose. It's called "laches," the doctrine of unnecessary delay. Any competent, unbiased lawyer would agree with this point.
Congressman Billybob
"The claimants named CSX because slave labor was used to construct portions of some U.S. rail lines under the political and legal system in place more than a century before CSX was formed in 1990," the company complained. "Courtrooms are the wrong setting for this issue."
"Whatever claims they are alleging, are too remote or attenuated from the direct conduct of slavery to be able to have a legal claim," said Behrens, who predicted the suit would be dismissed or, perhaps, settled out of court.
The smell of money is in the air, as these companies will capitulate just to be left alone.
Regards,
Seeking to right a wrong that dates back centuries, advocates of reparations for slavery have extracted apologies from a number of U.S. corporations, including The Courant. Now they're looking for something much more tangible - money.
A lawsuit expected to be filed today against Hartford-based insurer Aetna, the FleetBoston financial services firm, railroad operator CSX and several other companies seeks damages, shares of corporate profits and what amounts to generations worth of back pay for forced labor.
Ed Fagan, a Livingston, N.J., lawyer who is among a team of attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said a total of eight companies will be targeted in suits filed today in federal courts in New York and New Jersey. He declined to name the other five companies.
"It's the beginning of a series of lawsuits to place the issue of reparations for African Americans on the table," Fagan said.
As each of the firms dismissed the merits of the suits Monday, Fagan indicated that the list of defendants would get longer. "That list will probably grow to between 60 and 100 unless the defendants see the wisdom of acceding to what are reasonable demands."
The move to compensate the descendants of slaves has gained a significant amount of momentum in the past few years and garnered an equal amount of press attention.
Two years ago, Aetna apologized for insuring as property the lives of slaves in the 1850s. The ensuing round of media coverage and hand-wringing got many wondering about the role other corporations and businesses might have played in the sale and purchase of human beings. A number of other companies took public relations hits as it was revealed that they, too, profited from slavery. And in a story published on July 4, 2000, The Courant issued an apology of its own - for accepting ads for the sale and capture of slaves until at least 1823.
There will be four plaintiffs in the suits to be filed today, but Fagan would name only one - Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a 36-year old law school graduate and New York resident who has spent years researching the history of business with regard to slavery. It was Farmer-Paellmann whose research led to the apology from Aetna.
Despite its status as a front-burner issue - at least before Sept. 11 - the move for reparations may be doomed to failure.
"I expect that this lawsuit will be dismissed in relatively short order," said Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University. "There is little apparent legal merit to these arguments. The reparations issue is something that plays better on cable news than it does within a courtroom."
James Mahoney, a FleetBoston spokesman in Boston, said the company has yet to see the suit, but "will review it when it is filed and respond appropriately."
In a statement, Aetna said, "We do not believe a court would permit a lawsuit over events which - however regrettable - occurred hundreds of years ago. These issues in no way reflect Aetna today." The firm added that it has invested "more than $36 million in the African American community" and has "embraced diversity."
CSX, in a statement, called slavery "a tragic chapter in our nation's history. It is a history shared by every American, and its impacts cannot be attributed to any single company or industry. However, the lawsuit to be filed in court in New York City against CSX and other corporations demanding financial reparations is wholly without merit and should be dismissed."
Reparations advocates applauded the impending suit.
"Full steam ahead with it," said Sam Anderson, a member of the Manhattan-based Reparations Mobilization Coalition, adding that he would like to see any damages awarded used to fund education, health care and a variety of other programs. "Very simply, it's long overdue."
Connecticut State Rep. Reginald G. Beamon, D-Waterbury, who in the past has introduced legislation that would have funded a study of reparations, said it was difficult to comment on the suit without having seen it, but added, "Obviously, a discussion on this issue is warranted in some way. Whether through the courts or not, I'm not sure."
Fagan said the firms were named as defendants because "these are the ones that the lead plaintiffs can show a connection to."
Though there will be no dollar value listed in the suit, Fagan suggested that the plaintiffs might be looking for astronomical sums.
"It was in the trillions of dollars if you're just talking about how the companies profited," he said.
Turley, though, said federal and state statutes are not written in a way that would allow such a suit to succeed.
"The law," he said, "simply does not have a claim or a remedy to fit these allegations. The reparations litigation suffers on a number of legal fronts. First, it's not clear that these individuals have standing to allege injury for historical incidents of slavery. Second, this is the type of injury that is shared by a variety of races and groups within our population. Slavery is a scourge that affected not just the African American community but other races historically. There is a limit to what the law can do in terms of social causes. This is a social cause that cannot be fully translated into a legal cause."
Farmer-Paellmann could not be reached for comment Monday, but in interviews with The Courant she has said that she would like to use any money won in a reparations lawsuit to set up a trust fund for African Americans.
Courant Staff Writer Kenneth R. Gosselin contributed to this story.
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Even the left-wing rag, The Courant, is not immune to this stupidity. And I thought apologies made everything nicey-nice again.
Then I would offer reparations with the cost of a first class ticket to the African nation of their choice deducted and require them to renounce their American citizenship and agree never to return as a condition of getting the settlement.
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