June 14

USA:

High court sends back four wartime claims


The Supreme Court ordered a lower court on Monday to reconsider if
Holocaust survivors and heirs can sue the French national railroad for
transporting more than 70,000 Jews and others to Nazi concentration camps
during World War II.

The case was one of four that justices sent back for more consideration
in light of their ruling last week that a federal law allows American
courts to hear old disputes over such things as wartime looted property,
unless the suits are barred by treaties.

The other cases involve claims that women were used by Japan during World
War II as sex slaves, that Austria is responsible for stolen art and that
Poland took Jewish families' land.

An appeals court had said that the French railroad was not protected from
litigation in the United States.

In appealing that ruling, New York attorney Andreas Lowenfeld,
representing the railroad, had told justices that a multitude of old
claims could deluge courts, if the court did not stop them.

The lawsuit alleges that Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais
delivered 72,000 "passengers" to their deaths during World War II,
billing per person per kilometer.

Stephen Rodd of New York, one of the attorneys representing the
survivors, said the railroad's conduct assisted in war crimes. He urged
the court not to delay the case, because witnesses are growing older or
dying.

In the case against Japan, an appeals court had ruled that Japan was
protected from a lawsuit by 15 women from China, Taiwan, North and South
Korea and the Philippines, who claim that Japan should pay damages for
trafficking in women and girls. They contend they were among about 20,000
who were used as "comfort women" for Japanese soldiers during the war.

The lawyer for the women said one was 10 when she was kidnapped and
enslaved, and the others ranged in age from 13 to 26.

The Austrian art case is a class-action lawsuit filed by people seeking
to recover property they claim was stolen by the Nazis, with Austria's
help.

Poland is accused of taking land after World War II from Jewish families
who had fled the country.

Those two cases, along with the French railroad case, return the 2nd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The lawsuit against Japan will be
considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit.

The cases are Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais v. Abrams,
03-284; Joo v. Japan, 03-741; Austria v. Whiteman, 03-500; Poland v. Garb,
03-517.

(source: Associated Press)