Tag Archives: victim lawsuits

U.S. top court will not revive verdict against Palestinian Authority, PLO

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, U.S., January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization gained a legal victory at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday as the justices refused to consider reinstating a $655.5 million jury award won against them by 11 American families over militant attacks in Israel.

The court declined to hear the families’ appeal of a lower court’s 2016 ruling throwing out the jury award secured in a lawsuit brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a law that lets American victims of international terrorism seek damages in U.S. courts.

The families had looked to hold the Palestinian Authority and PLO liable for six shootings and bombings between 2002 and 2004 in the Jerusalem area that killed 33 people, including several Americans, and wounded more than 450.

“It’s outrageous that the murderous Palestinian Authority is allowed to kill innocent civilians and not have to pay any cost. This is a horrible travesty of justice for the families and we will not let it stand,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, which represents the American families.

Gassan Baloul, a lawyer for the Palestinian defendants, said he was “gratified” that the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court that the high court left in place “respects the constitutional limits on the jurisdiction of U.S. courts,” Baloul added.

President Donald Trump’s administration had sided with the Palestinian Authority and PLO in the dispute, urging the justices not to take up the case because the specific claims could not be brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

“The United States condemns acts of terror in the strongest terms and the Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting those who commit terrorist attacks against innocent human beings to the fullest extent that the law allows,” U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said.

“We will continue to support wherever possible all lawful actions to fight terrorism and provide redress to the victims of terrorist attacks and their families,” Kupec added.

The attacks at the center of the lawsuit have been attributed to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Hamas. Lead plaintiff Mark Sokolow, his wife and their two daughters were injured in a 2002 suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

JURISDICTION QUESTION

The 2nd Circuit ordered that the civil lawsuit, which began in January 2004, be dismissed. The appeals court said the attacks occurred “entirely outside” U.S. territory, and found no evidence that Americans were targeted. As a result, American courts do not have jurisdiction to hear the claims, it said.

The families said late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, and his agents routinely arranged for payments to attackers and to families of militants who died. The Palestinian Authority and PLO have said they condemned the attacks and blamed them on rogue individuals within the organizations acting on their own.

In 2015, after a six-week trial, a federal jury in Manhattan awarded the families $218.5 million, which was tripled automatically to $655.5 million under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the appeals court decision “eviscerates the Anti-Terrorism Act” by severely limiting what cases can be heard in U.S. courts. They argued that Congress wrote the law specifically to apply to attacks that took place outside the United States in which U.S. citizens were injured or killed, whether or not Americans were specifically targeted.

In a separate case on a similar theme, the Supreme Court in February blocked a group of Americans injured in a 1997 suicide bombing in Jerusalem from seizing ancient Persian artifacts from a Chicago museum to satisfy a $71.5 million court judgment against Iran, which they had accused of complicity in the attack.

The Supreme Court in another case is weighing whether Jordan-based Arab Bank Plc can be sued over legal claims that it helped finance militant attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories. A ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Will Dunham)

Insurance brokers new business: ‘active shooter’ policies for U.S. schools

A girl writes a note on a banner placed on the fence of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to commemorate the victims of the mass shooting, in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Suzanne Barlyn and Noor Zainab Hussain

(Reuters) – Insurance broker Paul Marshall can count on his phone ringing in the aftermath of a school shooting.

Since the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school, where 17 people were killed and more than a dozen injured, seven South Florida school district have bought $3 million worth of “active shooter” coverage that Marshall’s Ohio-based employer, the McGowan Companies, began selling in 2016.

“Every day we get a phone call from another school district,” Marshall said.

The insurance, which is backed by XL Catlin  covers expenses tied to shootings in places such as office buildings and concert halls, and is increasingly gaining traction with schools. It pays up to $250,000 per shooting victim, for death and serious injuries, such as blindness or total disability, with additional medical coverage depending on how much insurance a district buys.

There is no detailed survey of insurance coverage at U.S. schools, but insurers say it is only within about the past year that more schools have been seeking “active shooter” and “active assailant” policies.

School districts often find that their general liability policies fall short on coverage for the cascade of bills that follow a violent incident like the mass shooting last month in Parkland, Florida, insurers and school administrators say.

The costs can include victim lawsuits, building repairs, legal fees, medical expenses and trauma counseling, as well as media consultants, accountants to handle charitable contributions, and even reconstruction of buildings where bloodshed occurred.

“This is a very sort of unique and specific issue that we are facing” Chris Parker, who heads a unit at Beazley PLC  that writes policies for political violence, terrorism and other risks, said about coverage for U.S. schools.

On Tuesday, a student who shot and critically wounded two fellow students at a Maryland high school died after exchanging gunfire with a campus security officer.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the February shooting, is covered under a general liability policy through its local school district, which does not spell out whether shootings are covered, a spokeswoman said.

That was also true at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a gunman killed 26 people in 2012. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by families of two children killed there seeking unspecified sums has dragged on since 2015.

In the case of public schools, state laws that exempt them from liability or limit the payouts can leave survivors and their families with huge medical expenses. Those laws can have exceptions and in some states, such as Florida, the legislature has authority to waive such limits.

Still, the process can take years and while school employees are generally covered through workers’ compensation insurance some shooter policies could help families meet some of the medical costs.

CROWDFUNDING FOR SURVIVORS

Some desperate families have turned to crowdfunding sites. For instance, Royer Borges is using GoFundMe to raise $1 million for his son Anthony, a Parkland student who has undergone eight surgeries since being shot five times during the massacre.

Anthony has insurance through a government sponsored-program for children, but it is unclear how much it will cover, his lawyer Alex Arreaza said.

The privately-owned McGowan Companies, fielded 10 times the number of queries in February about shooting coverage and inked three times more policies than a year before, according to Marshall.

Some coverage has been around since 2011, but more insurers, including Beazley, XL Catlin, Hiscox Ltd <HSX.L> have launched such policies since 2016, as mass shootings showed no sign of abating.

For example, insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group  recently began selling coverage to help terror and mass shooting victims, including at schools, and a Munich unit in June began offering schools $100,000 in additional coverage for reimbursement of violent event expenses.

Premiums can range anywhere from $1,400 per year for $1 million in coverage for a small private school to $50,000-$100,000 for a $5 million to $10 million policy for a large public school district, industry executives said.

While one insurance executive described the market for school shooter policies as “embryonic” sales have been rising. As a result, premiums have come to about a third of what they cost two years ago, Marshall said. He is now developing a policy that covers construction costs for school districts that want to demolish buildings where shootings occurred.

In 2013, officials in Newtown, Connecticut, voted to tear down Sandy Hook Elementary School and the state gave the town $50 million for the new building.

A Florida school safety law signed on March 9 includes $25.3 million to replace the building at the Parkland high school where the shooting occurred.

Church Mutual Insurance Co in Merrill, Wisconsin, which insures private and religious schools nationwide, has been fielding calls from customers who want to raise coverage beyond the $50,000 per victim and up to $300,000 per violent incident it already offers through its general liability policies, said chief underwriting officer Ed Hancock.

Nate Walker, vice president of sales at insurance wholesaler Special Markets Insurance Consultants (SMIC), an AmWINS Group Inc unit, said the company considered a name change for its “Active Shooter Insurance Program,” offered since 2014 as part of a broader package aimed at schools, because it was a tough-sell.

“The more events that happened, the more we came to say there’s no reason to call this anything other than what it is,” Walker said. “You can’t really sugarcoat this.”

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Additional reporting Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Tomasz Janowski)