The Courtroom Battle
Three years after the UAE, in partnership with UNICEF, established a model program to rescue and repatriate underage jockeys, American plaintiffs' attorneys have tried to resurrect a baseless lawsuit that has placed this multinational program in jeopardy.
The UAE-UNICEF initiative, described by the U.N. agency as a "model for the region," has eliminated the use of children in camel racing in the UAE and located and repatriated nearly 1,100 former camel jockeys back to their homes in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Mauritania.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington, Ky., in September 2007, threatens this UAE-supported program which has set aside more than $11 million since 2005 to compensate the former camel jockeys and provide a network of support to improve their lives and attack the underlying poverty that drove the trafficking and exploitation of children. A similar lawsuit was dismissed by a Florida judge earlier in 2007.
The Kentucky lawsuit alleges that Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, the UAE minister of finance, and other UAE rulers were involved in forcing young boys from countries such as Pakistan to work in their country as camel jockeys. In fact, the UAE has been a leader in addressing this serious human rights problem in the Gulf region, implementing a ban on the practice in 2005 and entering into a major initiative to ensure that the problem does not resurface and the former child camel jockeys receive medical care and other assistance.
The lawsuit was brought by Motley Rice, a class action firm that has won big settlements in tobacco, asbestos and other cases. Its legal underpinning is the Alien Tort Statute, an obscure 200-year-old law relating to piracy that lets federal courts hear claims by foreigners who say they were injured "in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." (See related documents in this section on the ATS.)
By attempting to force a U.S. court to rule on activities that took place thousands of miles away, the plaintiffs are threatening the UAE's successful effort to broker a multinational solution to a serious global problem, according to a motion for dismissal filed on May 9 by the defendant's lawyers, Joseph Finnerty III of New York and Phillip Scott of Lexington, Ky.
"The problems raised in this lawsuit are serious ones, but they are already being dealt with seriously by the nations with the greatest interest in the problem and its solution," stated the legal filing.
The motion noted that the lawsuit doesn't even belong in U.S. courts because none of the parties reside in the United States. If successful, this legal action could also undermine relations between the United States and the UAE, a longtime ally, the filing stated.
The Kentucky lawsuit is almost identical to a suit brought by the same plaintiffs in Florida in 2006. That lawsuit, which named Sheikh Hamdan and his brother, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the prime minister and vice president of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai, was dismissed by a federal judge in July of last year.
U.S. Judge Cecelia Altonaga ruled that the case didn't belong in federal court in Miami because none of the alleged crimes had taken place in Florida and the sheiks had no significant ties to that state.
In September 2007, Motley Rice refilled similar charges in Kentucky against Sheikh Hamdan. Once again, the plaintiff's attorneys asked the judge to grant class-action status for up to 10,000 children and their families who they claim were illegally trafficked to serve as jockeys in camel races.
But the same argument for dismissal that was accepted by the Florida court applies in Kentucky as well, according to Sheikh Hamdan's lawyers. Contrary to the plaintiffs' claims, Sheikh Hamdan does not personally own any race horses or other property in Kentucky and has no other significant ties to the state. The lawsuit was clearly an attempt by the plaintiffs to venue shop after they were turned away by the Florida courts.
Dr. Habib Al Mulla, spokesman for Sheik Hamdan, said, "Plaintiffs' lawyers persist in their baseless claims that only distract from the truly important efforts by the UAE to help children. Anyone who honestly reviews the facts will conclude that the remarkable programs created by UNICEF and the UAE are providing benefits to more children, and are doing so faster and with greater certainty, than could any solution mandated by U.S. courts."
