Lloyd's is hit by slavery lawsuit.
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| Tue, 03-30-2004 - 9:49am |
The suit, filed in Manhattan’s federal court, seeks just over £1 billion in punitive damages from Lloyd’s, tobacco firm RJ Reynolds and banking group FleetBoston. The suit also seeks unspecified actual damages.
Filed on behalf of six adults and two children, the suit alleges the companies intentionally sought to destroy the plaintiffs’ "people, culture, religion and heritage".
Lawyers for the eight plaintiffs said the complaint - unlike past lawsuits seeking reparations for slavery - was the first to use DNA to link the plaintiffs to Africans who suffered atrocities during the slave trade.
The plaintiffs said their ancestors were transported from Africa as part of the slave trade from 1619 to 1865. They allege that Lloyd’s insured slave ships, while FleetBoston, then called Rhode Island’s Providence Bank, financed the ships in the slave trade. RJ Reynolds, the suit claims, profited from plantations.
RJ Reynolds spokeswoman Ellen Matthews said the firm had not yet seen the complaint but added: "Currently we are not aware of any legal precedent or even a legal theory that would allow these cases to proceed to trial."
A Lloyd’s spokeswoman said it had not seen the claim and was not in a position to comment, but she added that previous claims regarding slavery had been dismissed.
FleetBoston was not available for comment.
The plaintiffs’ attorney is Edward Fagan, who is well known for taking on controversial cases. In 1998 he forced Swiss banks into a £685 million settlement on behalf of victims of the Holocaust.
He said: "For the last eight years every victim group in the world but one has been given its day in court. The only group that remains is Africans or African-Americans."
There have been other lawsuits to condemn US slavery, but Mr Fagan said his case is different because his clients can trace their roots back to their African ancestry.
Plaintiffs in the past "couldn’t say what their connection was to these companies - that’s all changed, there’s DNA now," he said.
"Each one of these individuals can tell you specifically where they came from in Africa," Mr Fagan added.
U.S. Slave Descendants Claim Damages Against Lloyds.
>" "They took people, they put them on ships, and they wiped out their identity."
Slavery was abolished in the British empire in the 1830s and around 30 years later in the United States. But more than 10 million people are thought to have been traded as slaves at west African ports and herded onto ships bound for America in the 1700s and early 1800s.
Fagan, who is expected to file the claim in New York on Monday, rejected charges that the case was based on events too far in the past. "<
>" Fagan won fame for representing victims of the Holocaust and is currently leading a string of multi-million-dollar lawsuits in the United States against multinational companies which he says should pay compensation for benefiting from the apartheid regime in South Africa, which ended in 1994. "<
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Garbage suit, garbage logic.
~mark~
I agree with you on this one, Mark.
From what I can gather, it does not seem as though there is any basis for a real suit, as none of the parties involved were "damaged" in any way.
Wasn't there an attempt here in the US for something along these lines that failed?
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/26/slavery.reparations/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/01/26/slave.reparations.ap/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,51723,00.html
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040127-120324-8762r.htm
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/012604_ns_slavereparations.html
~mark~
~mark~
I say, the blacks that want reparations should get them- then be sent off to live in their "homeland". I think this one disclaimer would put an end to this nonsense.