If the lawyers in the Slavery Reparations case don't get sanctions, they may.........

as well throw out Rule 11 completely.

This is a COMPLETE F&(KING JOKE. Talk about wasting a courts time.

The day I am called upon to pay .01 cent in reparations, is the day I move to Canada.


Judge Dismisses Slave Reparations Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: January 26, 2004


Filed at 3:09 p.m. ET

CHICAGO (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by descendants of slaves against corporations they say profited from slavery, saying the plaintiffs had established no clear link to the companies they targeted.

The court still left the door open for further litigation.

``Plaintiffs' attempt to bring these claims more than a century after the end of the Civil War and the formal abolition of slavery fails,'' U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle said.

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He said the plaintiffs' claims ``are beyond the constitutional authority of this court.'' And he said the suit alleged no specific connection between the plaintiffs and the companies named as defendants.

But the ruling dismissed the case ``without prejudice,'' meaning the slave descendants seeking reparations from U.S. companies are allowed to file an amended complaint.

Lionel Jean-Baptiste, a lawyer representing two women who are descendants of slaves, said he expected to do exactly that.

``I had an expectation that this would happen,'' Jean-Baptiste said after Norgle released his 75-page opinion.

The lawsuit was first filed in U.S. District Court in New York in 2002 and later moved to Chicago. The suit names companies like the Lehman Brothers brokerage firm, Aetna Insurance and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, saying they or their corporate ancestors made money off slavery. Lawsuits filed around the country seeking reparations for slavery have been combined into a single court action.

In his opinion, Norgle acknowledged ``the historic injustices and the immorality of the institution of human chattel slavery in the United States.''

But he said longstanding doctrine in matters involving political questions ``bars the court from deciding the issue of slavery reparations, an issue that has been historically and constitutionally committed to the legislative and executive branches of our government.''

As for the timing, he said the plaintiffs had failed to show how the wrongs cited in the lawsuit fall within the statute of limitations.

``Some may view this ruling as a condonation of ancient wrongs,'' Norgle said. ``That view is wrong. To suggest that the lions have won again and that the court is impervious to the human suffering at the core of this case would be absurd.''

Jean-Baptiste had said that if the plaintiffs won their lawsuit, they would set up a trust fund to help the black community support social programs.

Andrew McGaan, an attorney representing Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., one of the defendants, said he was ``not surprised at all that the court decided to dismiss.''

He said the judge had agreed ``with what appears to be every ground that we raised.''

But supporters of the lawsuit told a news conference after the decision that they did not see it as a defeat so much as a step along the way in a broader movement aimed at obtaining reparations for slavery.

Richard E. Barber of Somerset, N.J., said he was the grandson of slaves and had grown up on a North Carolina tobacco farm.

``We are here on behalf of all of those enslaved Africans who worked for 240 years without a payday,'' Barber said. He said there are people in America ``who have trust funds built on the backs of slaves. Time to pay up.''

 

Doubt that will get to the Supreme Court level.
But who knows what those Conservative Republican Justices better known as Souter, Stevens, Kennedy & O'Connor would do.
Probably refer to their versions of the US Constitution that some mistakenly believe was written in the 18th Century, but that the Big Brothers & Sisters know better was and is being written every day by European courts and the respective law faculties at Yale, Harvard & Stanford.
Foolish American people, thinking the Constitution was written anywhere else, the Republican Justices know better!

 

This was taken from a Charley Reese column. Reese is a syndicated columnist with the Orlando Sentinel:

 

Exactly, SabanFan. Some people compare this issue to past reparations settlements that were made for American Indians, Holocaust survivors, and the Nissei (Japanese Americans sent to relocation camps during World War II). But those three cases had two things the slave reparations cause lacks; LIVING victims who were paid by LIVING oppressors, or at least someone who had legal documents to prove their direct lineage to a victim.

Contrast that to the slave reparations movement, where the last slave and the last slaveowner have been dead for the better part of a centrury and slave genealogy is so splotchy, with so few legal documents that survive to this day, it would be impossible to truly see who should get what without just giving a fixed amount of cash to every black person in America. Which is what the real goal is.

Regardless, this issue was DOA and won't make much political impact at all. The lawsuits will get ZERO play in court, and they will gradually fade away.

 

I keep hearing an old song by Fat's domino running through my mind.

"ain't that a shame"
oh well life clamours on.

I thought reparations was a knew kind of dog chow, shows what i know I guess it amounts to about the same importance though!

 

My ancestors were forced to leave Canada by the British in
the 18th century...does this mean I have a case for reparations against the British government?

There's always going to be somebody who wants something for nothing. That's what this whole reparations thing amounts to.

 

Re: Re: If the lawyers in the Slavery Reparations case don't get sanctions, they may.........

Hell yes. And those damn limeys owe me reparations for the potato famine and 300 years of repressing the Catholic Church.

 

Warning!
O'Connor is leading a contingent to Europe to help set up the European Union court system this fall.
There is no telling what she and Kennedy will come back with as far as the reparations issue.
If the French, Norwegians and Swedes tell them that they should be embrassed not to be paying out reparations, don't be surprised if reparations don't magically appear in the US Constitution in the next term or so.

 

don't worry. reparations will never make it through any american court. all reparations does is makes whites think that the blacks who want reparations are stupid and lazy.

 

Don't worry?
Mistake.
The current US Supreme Court is the most undemocratic and anti-Constitution ever.
The Warren Court gets criticized for being so-called liberal, it has nothing on the O'Connor court.
At least the Warren Court had the decency to bend and stretch the actual US Constitution.
The O'Connor Court is unrestrained, publicly announcing such, by the Constitution.
I'm not predicting one way or the other on the reparations issue.
I'd just remind everyone that this Court, the ultimate Big Brother, advocates a more radical and personal social agenda ever seen in US history.
A few law review articles or statements from European Courts promoting reparations could very well be enough for the O'Connor Court to determine the Constitution demands such payments.