COURT: FAMILIES CANNOT GET PAY
By Christopher Cadelago

Glendale News Press
Friday, August 21, 2009 9:36 AM PDT

Court’s 2-1 ruling denies insurance pay to relatives of Armenians
killed in 1915-18 massacre.

GLENDALE – The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday nullified
a state law that allowed descendants of Armenians killed in the
Turkish Ottoman Empire to request payment on the life-insurance
policies of relatives.

The federal appeals court said in its 2-1 ruling that the law amounted
to unconstitutional interfering in U.S. foreign policy.

The decision was based on a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck
down a state law designed to assist Holocaust survivors collect on
World War II-era insurance policies.

Three times Congress has considered resolutions in the last decade
that would have provided recognition of the genocide. But the White
House has urged each time that the bills be foiled, fearing that
their passage would damage relations with Turkey, whose government
denies that a genocide took place.

Mass slaughtering of Armenians during World War I have never been
recognized by the federal government as genocide, despite the state
Legislature’s doing so nine years ago when it enacted the law in
question.

Rep. Adam Schiff, who as a state assemblyman co-wrote the overturned
law, could not be reached for comment.

Earlier Thursday he said he found the court’s reasoning perplexing.

"You have a group of people that has a government that hasn’t had
the will to recognize the genocide and as a result of that failing,
are being told they don’t have valid insurance claims," Schiff told
the Associated Press.

The state law gives relatives of Armenians who died or fled until
the end of 2010 to file claims for bank accounts and life-insurance
policies.

If the ruling stands, Armenian heirs would be prevented from claiming
inheritances.

Class-action lawsuits brought by Armenian relatives across the county
eventually led to $20-million and $17-million settlements in 2005.

The court’s ruling Thursday reversed one of a lower court judge
who refused to dismiss another class-action suit against European
insurance companies. Armenian National Committee members could not
be reached for comment late Thursday.

The ruling would also prevent California and other states from
observing the anniversary of the ethnic bloodshed – which between 1915
and 1919 claimed the lives of as many as 1.5 million Armenians, said
Brian S. Kabateck, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the plaintiffs,
whose own maternal grandparents died in the genocide.

Because the ruling does not apply retroactively, none of the California
residents paid as part of earlier settlements must refund the money,
he said.