[cure-news] New day in court for reparations

[Ida Hakim]

New day in court for reparations

Plaintiffs appeal ruling in suit seeking pay for slaves' descendants

By Jeff Coen
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 28, 2006

Federal lawsuits filed by the descendants of slaves seeking reparations 
from companies that allegedly benefited from slavery are too important 
not to go forward, lawyers for some of those family members argued 
Wednesday.

The attorneys told a three-member panel of the 7th Circuit Court of 
Appeals they are seeking redress for the victims of a crime against 
humanity.

U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle had dismissed the lawsuit last 
summer, deciding that plaintiffs had no standing against more than a 
dozen companies named, including Aetna insurance, Brown and Williamson 
Tobacco, CSX railroad, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase, both 
financial services companies. The statutes of limitations had run out, 
the judge said, and it would not be possible for the plaintiffs to show 
how they had been damaged by the acts of the defendants about 150 years ago.

The lawyers on Wednesday asked the appeals court to send the case back 
to Norgle so that those issues can be more fully explored in an 
evidentiary hearing. Several cases had been filed around the country but 
were consolidated in Chicago.

Many northern companies headquartered in states where slavery was 
illegal made the practice possible by insuring slaves and offering loans 
for their purchase, attorney Bruce Afran argued. Those same companies 
then waited decades, until recent years, to disclose their connections 
to the slave trade, he said, making it impossible for slaves or their 
families to make claims before now.

U.S. Appeals Judge Richard Posner, of the 7th Circuit, said he still has 
questions about some of the central issues, including how business 
practices in the 1850s can have much bearing on current events. It would 
be difficult to show how the conduct of one of the defendant companies 
in the slavery era would change a person's current wealth, he said.

"I don't know how that can be connected to an injury to a modern 
person," Posner said.

Afran said the descendants of slaves were deprived of the earnings and 
assets they would have gathered had they worked freely.

Two of the plaintiffs are the children of slaves, Afran said.

"This is not ancient history," he said. "This is living history."

There were hundreds of slaves who still were living even in the 1940s, 
Afran said, when the defendant companies still were not revealing their 
involvement.

"Do we reward these defendants for non-disclosure?" he asked.

The plaintiffs' lawyers also took issue with the makeup of the panel. 
Appeals Judge Ann Williams, an African-American who was originally on 
the panel, was not at the hearing and was replaced by Appeals Judge 
Frank Easterbrook, who is white.

The attorneys asked the members of the panel to recuse themselves or 
offer an explanation for the Williams absence. But the lawyers were told 
to file a motion within 10 days. Williams had no comment after the hearing.

The plaintiffs would like funds they might secure to become part of a 
trust fund that would benefit the descendants of slaves, to possibly 
fund education and health care.

One of the plaintiffs, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, said her ancestry can 
be traced to a great-great-grandfather who was a slave in South Carolina 
insured by Aetna.

"Millions and millions of Africans were stolen," she said, and shipped 
to plantations or sent to help build railroads. Millions died or were 
tortured while their work made some of the defendant companies billions 
of dollars, she said.

"We are the heirs of that wealth," she said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/southsouthwest/chi-0609280304sep28,1,62.story?coll=chi-newslocalssouthwest-hed

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