Legal News

With New Filing, Lawsuit Against Blackwater Steps up a Notch

By Ashby Jones

In recent days, the buzz out of the courthouse in Alexandria, Va., has swirled around former congressman William Jefferson and his corruption trial.

But another lawsuit filed in that very same courthouse could overshadow the Jefferson matter as soon as that case wraps up with a jury verdict. And if a filing made Monday is any indication, things could heat up fairly quickly.

That lawsuit was filed in early June by the families of Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by operatives of Blackwater Worldwide, the private outfit hired by the U.S. government to provide security-forces throughout much of the U.S. military’s stay in Iraq. The complaint names Blackwater, whose parent company now goes by the name Xe, Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince (pictured), and others. Click here, for the complaint, filed by Susan Burke and William Gould of Burke O’Neil.

The complaint contains some strongly worded allegations arising from an alleged incident in which a drunk Blackwater employee on Christmas Eve 2006 killed an Iraqi citizen “for no reason.” The complaint goes on to allege:

Last month, Blackwater, repped by Mayer Brown’s Peter White, Andrew Pincus, and Michael Lackey, moved to dismiss the lawsuit claiming the Christmas Eve incident “concerns the alleged misconduct of an IC who, of his own accord and after hours, attended a holiday party, got drunk and, by Plaintiffs' own assertion, wandered "intoxicated" into Baghdad and shot a security guard.”

Blackwater alleged that the plaintiffs’ other charges “must fail, because they are not actionable under applicable Iraqi law and, in any event, involve conduct plainly outside the scope of the IC's employment under Virginia law.” The brief cited the recent Iqbal Supreme Court decision, in rebuffing the plaintiffs’ larger allegations about Blackwater’s conduct: “many of Plaintiffs’ allegations must be disregarded as "bare assertions* * * [that] amount to nothing more than a 'formulaic recital of the elements'" of their claims.”

This past Monday, however, things heated up. In response to the motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs offered up sworn statements of two former Blackwater employees who accused Blackwater and Prince of killing Iraqis for fun, smuggling weapons and deceiving the State Department. Click here for the filing; here for the Times of London report on the filing.

One of the men makes a series of accusations against Erik Prince. He says the Blackwater Worldwide boss "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” The man also alleged that, based on information from other sources, “that Mr Prince and his employees murdered or had murdered one or more persons who have provided information or were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.”

In response, Blackwater issued a statement saying it would respond “to the anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive assertions put forward by the plaintiffs,” in a brief to be filed on August 17.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 05, 2009 (boomark / email).