ممكن احد يجب لي خبر دفع فديه بمبلغ نصف مليون لسبع سائقين
هذا اهوا الخبر اخوي عليى :
KGL, Iraq Contractor, May Avoid $4.9 Million Fatality Verdict
By Laurence Viele Davidson and Tony Capaccio
Courtesy of Bloomberg.Com
9 January 2009
A federal judge has said he may be forced to render an “injustice” and cancel his order telling a Kuwaiti military contractor in Iraq to pay $4.9 million to the family of a U.S. Army officer killed in a road accident.
The contractor, Kuwait & Gulf Link Transport Co., is asking U.S. District Judge William Duffey in Atlanta to throw out the 2007 default judgment, arguing he lacks jurisdiction over the foreign company for a wreck that happened overseas.
Duffey’s remarks at a December 5, 2008, hearing suggest he is leaning in that direction, said an attorney for the family of deceased Lieutenant Colonel Dominic Rocco Baragona. The judge might rule at any time.
“I think what the defendant has done here is ghastly,” the judge said, referring to the Safat, Kuwait-based trucking company, according to a transcript of the hearing. “I’m going to interpret my law and my Constitution the way my courts tell me that I should, even though in the bottom of my heart I might think that I am ultimately working an injustice.”
Steve Perles, a Washington lawyer representing the Baragona family, predicted his clients will lose.
“Duffey is sending a strong signal that he’ll do what the law requires whether he finds the company’s actions morally repugnant,” Perles said January 5, 2009, in an interview.
Cliff Zatz, a lawyer for KGL with the Washington law firm Crowell & Moring, declined to comment, saying the company hadn’t authorized him to speak publicly.
T
he Army is reviewing the case to determine whether the company should be barred from bidding for U.S. military contracts.
KGL has a contract to transport supplies for the military in Iraq. It provided the largest quantity of heavy equipment transporters and flatbed trucks to contractor IAP Worldwide Services in support of the U.S. surge in 2007, it said on its Web site.
Baragona, 42, died May 19, 2003, two months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, at the Iraq-Kuwait border. The Humvee in which he was riding on his way home on leave collided with a tractor- trailer driven by a KGL employee, according to the family’s complaint and an Army accident report.
The truck struck a pile of debris, jackknifed and crossed the road into the military vehicle, the Army report said. The KGL driver was at fault, the family said, citing the report.
The Baragonas sued in Atlanta because nearby Fort McPherson is headquarters for the Army’s Central Command, which contracted with KGL. The family won a default judgment because the company didn’t appear,
and the court didn’t determine whether KGL’s driver was at fault.
The company first responded to the 2005 lawsuit last February after
Duffey ordered the payment. KGL asked the judge to cancel his ruling and dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction.
At the December hearing, company officials testified they never did business with or received any money or paperwork from Fort McPherson.
“All of the contracts were issued, administered, performed and paid in Kuwait,” KGL said in court papers.
The case drew the attention of members of Congress and the White House. The Bush administration in 2006 asked the Army to review whether the company should be barred from receiving U.S. contracts. Two U.S. senators in October asked the Kuwaiti government to urge KGL to pay the damages.
An Army fraud unit in Arlington, Virginia, is monitoring the case to see if there are grounds for a debarment proceeding against KGL, said David Foster, an Army spokesman.
Military authorities in December told KGL to prove it has liability insurance as it’s required to, the Army said.
The Baragona family received $250,000 in military insurance for the soldier’s death, his father, Dominic Baragona, said. They are using the money to award high-school scholarships, he said.
Th
e family, resigned to a court loss, still is fighting to get KGL banned from contracting with the government and will meet with congressional staffers next week, Baragona, 75, said yesterday.
“We are not going away,” he said. “That’s what the Rock would do for us.”