Monday, June 04, 2007

Judge Altonaga is busy...

In addition to the 400 plaintiffs to be tried 5 at a time, Judge Altonaga also has the "child camel jockey" case, which was profiled this weekend in the NY Times:

The plaintiffs are thousands of boys from South Asia and Africa who say they were abducted, enslaved and forced to ride racing camels to entertain the rich in the Middle East. The defendants live in the United Arab Emirates.
But the case is pending in Miami, and the jockeys are represented not by human rights groups but by Motley Rice, a leading contingency-fee class-action firm based in South Carolina known for its work in tobacco, asbestos and other domestic injury cases.
The class-action bar is going global. Until recently, international human rights cases in American courts were brought mainly by public interest lawyers more interested in calling attention to abuses and in establishing universal legal standards than in a potential payday.
The prominent plaintiffs’ firms, their critics say, are in it for the money. And the fact that they have started to embrace international human rights law may be a reflection of the relatively limited opportunities left in domestic class-action suits after legislative and judicial efforts to cut them back.

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