A good decision -- how do you penalize a company and stockholders today for (lamentably) legal actions taken (often by a predecessor entity) over a century and a half ago?

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected most claims by slave descendants that they deserve reparations from some of the nation's biggest insurers, banks and transportation companies.

The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that slave descendants have no standing to sue for reparations based on injustices suffered by ancestors and that the statute of limitations ran out more than a century ago.

But the panel did keep alive a smaller portion of the suit, claiming that major U.S. corporations may be guilty of consumer fraud if they hid past ties to slavery from their customers.

The opinion, written by Judge Richard A. Posner, said that "statutes of limitations would be toothless" if descendants could collect damages for wrongs against their ancestors.

"A person whose ancestor had been wronged a thousand years ago could sue on the ground that it was a continuing wrong and he is one of the victims," the court said. It said statutes of limitations could be extended in some cases but not for acts committed 100 years ago.

The panel also said the descendants lacked standing to sue because their links to the slaves were distant.

Now the court did keep alive a consumer fraud claim, but I doubt it will prevail. After all, does a company have an affirmative obligation to disclose any connection to slavery in its distant past?

Posted by: Greg at 10:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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