The Nation - News from March 9, 1988

Attorneys focused on whether the statute of limitations had expired as they presented arguments in the $24-billion class-action suit of 120,000 Japanese-Americans against the federal government before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This is the second time a federal appeals court has heard the suit, which seeks compensation for property losses of Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. In 1986, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the government must defend itself against the suit. But the Supreme Court ruled that the issue of whether the suit was filed by the legal deadline should have been decided instead by another court.