Slave Reparations Plaintiffs Win Minor Victory
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
CHICAGO — A federal appeals court yesterday rejected most claims by slave descendants that they deserve reparations from some of the nation’s biggest companies. The panel affirmed a lower court ruling that slave descendants have no standing to sue for reparations based on injustices suffered by their ancestors and that the statute of limitations ran out more than a century ago.
But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did keep alive a slender portion of the suit, claiming that major American corporations may be guilty of consumer fraud if they hid past ties to slavery from their customers.
The 17-page opinion written by Judge Richard Posner said that if descendants could collect damages for wrongs against their ancestors “statutes of limitations would be toothless.”
In allowing the consumer-protection claims, the appeals court said a seller who, fearing the loss of buyers who would object to some component in his product, “falsely represents that the product does not contain the component is guilty of fraud.”
