![\"Sassunian](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Sassunian-son-resim44.jpg\")
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Lawyers on behalf of Armenian plaintiffs responded last week to the U.S. Government\u2019s brief which had urged the Supreme Court not to review a Federal Appeals Court decision striking down a California law extending the statute of limitations on Armenian Genocide-era insurance claims.<\/p>\n
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The Solicitor General, on behalf of the U.S. government, had filed a politically-motivated and flawed brief that completely misrepresented the insurance case and raised unwarranted questions about the legality of the California law.<\/p>\n
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In his brief on the plaintiffs\u2019 behalf, Igor Timofeyev, argues that the California statute (Section 354.4) does not violate any established federal policy and should therefore not be preempted. He asserts that California has the right to regulate the obligations of insurance companies, a traditional sphere of state competence and jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
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The plaintiffs\u2019 lawyer accuses the US government of advancing \u201can unprecedented theory of federal affairs preemption: All claims arising out of international incidents are committed exclusively to the federal competence, even when these claims involve private actors and private contracts, and the federal government has taken no action to resolve them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Timofeyev qualifies the U.S. government\u2019s position as \u201crevolutionary\u201d and \u201cantithetical to the respect due to the states as separate sovereigns.\u201d He then summarizes his counter-arguments in six points:<\/p>\n
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1) \u201cTo justify the Ninth Circuit\u2019s aberrant decision, the Government articulates a foreign affairs field preemption theory of unprecedented breadth.\u201d Timofeyev asserts: \u201cPetitioners\u2019 claims are against a private [German insurance] company, not against a foreign sovereign. Nor are these claims integral to \u2018a major foreign policy dispute\u2019 between the U.S. and a foreign nation.\u201d The State of California, being \u201chome to the overwhelming majority of Armenian-Americans,\u201d has \u201ca legitimate interest in securing compensation for its injured residents, irrespective of whether the underlying injury occurred in-state or abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n
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2) \u201cThe court of appeals committed a fundamental error: It adjudged illegitimate a state\u2019s well-established interests in regulating insurance, setting the statute of limitations for state-law claims, and ensuring compensation for its injured residents simply because the events giving rise to these claims occurred overseas. That is not the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
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3) Countering the Government\u2019s contention that Section 354.4 is based on \u201ca distinct political point of view on a specific matter of foreign policy…<\/p>\n
one that decries the actions of the Ottoman Empire,\u201d Timofeyev reminds the court that Pres. Obama himself acknowledges that the Ottoman mass murders were \u201cone of the worst atrocities of the 20th<\/sup> century.\u201d Furthermore, the President commended states for commemorating \u201cthe massacre [of Armenians] in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.\u201d Timofeyev also asserts that \u201cthe President\u2019s repeated praise for states\u2019 commemorative efforts is fundamentally inconsistent with the Government\u2019s claim that the foreign affairs doctrine automatically preempts any state action expressing a \u2018point of view\u2019 on this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4) \u201cThe Government tries to bootstrap its preemption argument by invoking the U.S. efforts to negotiate a resolution of World War I era claims…. The Government concedes that Section 354.4 \u2018does not conflict\u2019 with any of these diplomatic efforts. Indeed, the Government acknowledges that \u2018the United States did not…attempt to negotiate the resolution of claims by Armenians who were injured by the Ottoman Empire during that period.\u2019\u201d In fact, one of the reasons why the US Senate refused to ratify the American Treaty of Lausanne was \u201cthe absence of provisions for the Armenian refugees and exiles from the Ottoman Empire.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5) The Government seems alarmed that Section 354.4 \u201cimposes the politically charged label of \u2018genocide\u2019\u201d on Turkey, which \u201ccould provoke Turkey\u2019s ire. But fear of \u2018upsetting foreign powers…even when the Federal Government desperately wants to avoid upsetting foreign powers\u2019 is not a legitimate reason to preempt traditional state activity…. The Government cannot explain why, if the term \u2018Armenian Genocide\u2019 employed by Section 354.4 would have an adverse effect on foreign affairs, the same would not hold equally for laws and resolutions adopted by about forty states that expressly recognize the Armenian Genocide by name. Nor does the Government explain why a statute \u2018creating judicially enforceable rights\u2019 is more offensive to Turkey than state laws including the Armenian Genocide as part of mandatory school curricula.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 6) \u201cThe Ninth Circuit\u2019s aberrant decision is generating confusion among lower courts.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Timofeyev rightly concludes his brief by urging the Supreme Court to \u201creview and correct the Ninth Circuit\u2019s decision before it causes greater mischief.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lawyers on behalf of Armenian plaintiffs responded last week to the U.S. Government\u2019s brief which had urged the Supreme Court not to review a Federal Appeals Court decision striking down a California law extending the statute of limitations on Armenian Genocide-era insurance claims. The Solicitor General, on behalf of the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4101,"featured_media":774085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3488],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harut-sassounian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}