JURIST - Paper Chase: Saturday, March 21, 2009

[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana [official website] on Friday denied [order, PDF] a motion by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) [official website] to dismiss a lawsuit [materials] brought by Louisiana homeowners for damages suffered as a result of flooding during Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive] in 2005. The plaintiffs, five homeowners who brought suit in 2007, argue that the Corps was negligent in its protection of flood-prone Louisiana areas due to defects in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) [USACE backgrounder]. The Corps filed a motion to dismiss the case based on the theory that the MRGO defects were caused by the Corps' discretionary functions, which are immune from lawsuit under the discretionary function exception [28 USC § 2680] of the Federal Tort Claims Act [text]. In denying the government's motion to dismiss the lawsuit and allowing the case to proceed to trial, Judge Stanwood Duval wrote

Plaintiffs sought to preclude the government from raising the discretionary function exception based on the first inquiry required for its application - that certain federal statutes, regulations and policies specifically prescribed a course of action for the Corps to follow and that the Corps had no choice but to adhere to those directives. The Court has found that the [Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act] does not provide such a bar; however, with respect to teh [National Environmental Policy Act], Plaintiffs demonstrated that there are material questions of fact that the Corps itself had found that the environmental damage caused by the maintenance and operation of the MRGO was significant, such that it had no choice but to file the appropriate mandated reports. As such, if the Court is convinced at trial that the Corps indeed violated a mandate and is precluded from its protection, then Plaintiffs will still bear the burden to prove that this failure caused the damages sought.

Duval previously allowed the lawsuit to proceed in May 2008, when he ruled [JURIST report] that that the outlet was a shipping channel and not a flood control outlet in connection with which the Corps would have been properly immune in tort, and rejected the Corps' argument that the MRGO was nonetheless part of a larger flood control system in the New Orleans area. Duval made a similar ruling [JURIST report] in February 2007 in the context of an earlier motion to dismiss. Three months before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, an expert at the LSU Hurricane Center [official website] predicted that the MRGO could amplify storm surges by 20-40 percent. After Katrina, the center determined through computer modeling that the presence of the MRGO also increased the speed of the surge, causing an even greater detrimental effect [Washington Post report].

[JURIST] Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar of the Supreme Court of Pakistan [official website] retired Saturday, paving the way for the official reinstatement of his predecessor, deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry [JURIST news archive]. Chaudhry will re-assume the office of Chief Justice [PTI report] Sunday. Dogar left the court Friday without receiving a full reception from the court's judges and staff, normally a sign of respect given in honor of the retiring judge's service to the court. The lack of a ceremony to commemorate Dogar's departure was indicative of the acrimony [Dawn report] existing between Dogar and other members of the Pakistani judiciary. Dogar took the office of Chief Justice following then-president Pervez Musharraf's November 2007 declaration of emergency law [JURIST report] and removal of Chaudhry [JURIST report].

Dogar's retirement marks the end of a tumultuous week in Pakistan. Following a protest and long march [JURIST report] led by the Pakistan lawyers' movement [JURIST news archive] and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) [party website] leader, former deputy prime minister Nawaz Sharif [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], President Asif Ali Zardari [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] announced the imminent reinstatement [JURIST report] of Chaudry. The news of Chaudhry's reinstatement was met with jubilation [JURIST report] by Pakistan lawyers and opposition supporters, as well as by Western governments and the United Nations [JURIST report]. On Thursday, the federal government, led by Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) [party website] filed an appeal [JURIST report] of a February Supreme Court decision [JURIST report] banning Sharif and his brother from holding elected office because of a past criminal conviction.

[JURIST] Chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] Luis Moreno-Ocampo [official profile] said Friday that the decision by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] to expel 13 foreign aid agencies [JURIST report] earlier this month demonstrates that the ICC is justified in pursuing war crimes charges [JURIST report] against Bashir. Ocampo's statement [AP report] came after a meeting [press release] of the UN Security Council [official website], which was held to address concerns over the removal of the aid agencies and to urge the Sudanese government to reconsider the expulsion. Bashir accused [Reuters report] the aid groups of complicity with the ICC, after the ICC issued a controversial arrest warrant for Bashir based on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ocampo has denied receiving any information from the agencies in Sudan.

Bashir has also threatened to expel [JURIST report] any remaining agencies, diplomats and peacekeepers in Sudan. Human rights and other groups had urged Bashir [JURIST report] to allow the agencies to remain in the country, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website] spokesman Rupert Colville has said that his office may investigate [JURIST report] whether Sudan's removal of the groups is a possible breach of human rights law or war crime.

[JURIST] A federal jury at the US District Court for the District of Puerto Rico [official website] on Friday found former Puerto Rican governor Anibal Acevedo Vila [JURIST news archive] not guilty on nine counts of conspiracy, false statements, and wire fraud, among other crimes. The charges stem from alleged violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act [text] during Vila's 1999-2000 and 2001-2002 campaigns to become Puerto Rico's Resident Commissioner in the US House of Representatives and his 2004 gubernatorial campaign. In the original indictment [text, PDF; JURIST report], prosecutors accused Vila and twelve others of authorizing illegal and unreported contributions to pay off debts in excess of $500,000 incurred during Vila's campaigns.

Vila is a member of the Popular Democratic Party [party website, in Spanish], which does not support full US statehood for the Commonwealth. In 2004, Vila narrowly defeated former governor and pro-statehood candidate Pedro Rossello [campaign website, in Spanish] in a disputed gubernatorial election [JURIST report]. It is believed that Vila lost his bid [LAHT Report] for a second gubernatorial term in November due to the corruption charges.