The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and… ATLA?

In October 2000, Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.S. Cole while it was attempting to refuel in Yemen; 17 American sailors died and 39 more were injured. The United States may not have retaliated militarily at the time, but in a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, the families of the victims are now suing… the government of Sudan, for $105 million. Sudan, claiming immunity, has refused to take part in the litigation; this likely means that the plaintiffs will prevail, because they have produced some evidence linking Sudan to the attacks:

“Sudan basically gave [al-Qaida] the breath of life it needed,” terrorism consultant and former journalist Douglas Farah testified in a videorecorded deposition. Sudan’s secretive Islamic banking system made it easy for al-Qaida to launder its money, Farah said. After U.N. sanctions squeezed Sudan in early 1992, he said, al-Qaida bought gold and conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone.

Sudan allowed al-Qaida to operate training camps where recruits from other nations were assembled, trained and returned to their own countries as sleeper cells, Vidino said. One such cell — a group of Yemenis trained in Sudan — carried out the Cole attack, he said.

After international pressure forced bin Laden to leave Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996, al-Qaida remained in Sudan — and remains today, Farah said. He said the explosives used to blow a hole in the Cole probably were transported by boat from Port Sudan to Aden across the Gulf of Aden, unexamined by customs officials. He said he could think of no other source for them.

In a videorecorded deposition, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey said Sudan’s involvement in the Cole bombing was “more likely than not” — the legal standard of proof in the civil lawsuit. Vidino and Farah said they did not believe al-Qaida could have attacked the Cole without Sudan’s help.

Now, to say the least, I certainly have no sympathy for the Sudanese government, let alone Al Qaeda. And the connection between Sudan and Al Qaeda is much closer than, for instance, the terrorism-related lawsuits against banks (covered on Overlawyered on Jan. 2006, Feb. 2006, and Oct. 2006.) And if the Sudanese government is to blame for an attack on a U.S. military vessel, I have no problem with seizing that country’s assets and retaliating militarily. But it seems that those ought to be political decisions, not legal ones. Shouldn’t our foreign policy be conducted by the president, the State Department and/or the military, not by a federal judge and some members of ATLA?

(By the way, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer (you guessed it): “[M]oney has never really been the issue.” But you can’t blame activist lawyers or courts for this one; Congress has explicitly authorized these suits, by creating a “terrorist exception” to the standard rule of foreign government immunity from such lawsuits.)

Incidentally, the lawyer for the plaintiffs seems to specialize in cases such as these; he previously represented American hostages in a successful lawsuit against Iraq and American prisoners in a lawsuit against Libya.

“The Henry Ford of Evictions”

The Los Angeles Times profiles a lawyer who specializes in representing Los Angeles landlords:

In a DVD he gives to landlords, Block describes himself this way: “A man who has evicted more tenants than any other human being on the planet Earth.”

[…]

That’s where Block comes in. He has dedicated his considerable creativity and intelligence to helping landlords evict tenants from rent-stabilized buildings. He boasts that his firm has filed more than 130,000 cases since 1980, a year after rent stabilization went into effect. He helps landlords identify minor violations — a pet fish in an aquarium, a brightly painted bathroom, an extra occupant — to toss out long-term tenants who are paying below market for their homes.

Because L.A.’s rent stabilization laws prohibit landlords from raising rents anywhere near market value until a tenant vacates the apartment, and the only way to force a tenant to vacate is to evict them based on “good cause,” Dennis Block can make a living filing 5,000 eviction cases a year. Rent control as full employment for lawyers.

Don’t let the lawyers bite

An Arkansas woman staying at a hotel claims she was bitten by bed bugs. Certainly grounds to demand a refund, if true. Or, you could claim to be traumatized by the experience, and file a lawsuit. Mental anguish, embarrassment and humiliation? Is that it? Couldn’t they pile on any more claims from a few bug bites?

March 14 roundup

Scheduled to be on CNN

I’m not saying anything that any regular blog-reader doesn’t already know, and I could well be bumped if Britney Spears goes shopping, but I taped an interview about the U.S. Attorney firings scheduled to be on CNN’s 7pm (Eastern) news if you have a morbid curiosity what I look and sound like on tv when I have a cold and only four hours of sleep.

Update: Ended up on the cutting room floor, apparently. Hope no one sat through an hour of Wolf Blitzer on my account.

Navarro case settles

We wrote about the Navarro case and its $217 million verdict a few times, including today. The insurance company has announced that the case was settled, though has not yet released any details. On information and belief, one should be able to divine those details at a later date from the public Florida reporting system, and we’ll try to track those figures down in a few months.

(Update, August 2007: details of settlement.)