Holocaust Survivors’ Claims Get Boost
California courts have the authority to hear cases against European insurance companies that have refused to honor decades-old insurance policies purchased by Jews as Hitler rose to power, a Los Angeles judge ruled Monday.
The precedent setting ruling is a major boost for claims filed by survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and the heirs of those who died. It could affect more than 6,000 California survivors, according to court papers.
“Let this landmark ruling be the shot heard round the world that it will not be business as usual for insurance companies who are accused of stonewalling Nazi victims,” said Lisa Stern, an attorney and relative of the family that brought the case. Her husband’s grandfather, Moshe “Mor” Stern, a Czech wine producer, died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz.
As a sign of the potential significance of the case, officials of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles came to court Monday to support the plaintiffs. California Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush hired a private lawyer to file a friend of the court brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The insurance companies have argued that California courts are not the proper forum to resolve Holocaust-related disputes. In Stern’s case, for example, the insurance company involved, Assicurazioni Generali, is based in Trieste, Italy, and the policy was written in prewar Czechoslovakia. Relevant records are abroad and most of the potential witnesses are too, the company’s lawyers have argued.
But Superior Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper sided with the plaintiff’s lawyers, who have based their case on a new law, designed specifically to allow such cases in state courts. The law, the Holocaust Victims Insurance Act, was written by Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) and unanimously passed by the Legislature last year.
Cooper rejected the assertion by Generali’s attorney, Jeffrey A. Tidus, that the law is unconstitutional. Tidus based his constitutionality claim on the argument that the insurance company does so little business in California that it would be a denial of due process to subject it to the jurisdiction of a California court in a matter that originated in another country.
The judge acknowledged that the case is ripe for a full hearing by an appellate court, and Tidus said the ruling will be appealed.
Attorney William Shernoff of Claremont, the Sterns’ lead lawyer, argued in defending the law that Generali has done business in California since 1958, has owned a subsidiary in the state and does $27 million a year in business in California.
Frank Kaplan, the attorney representing Quackenbush, argued in favor of the state law on the grounds that California has an “extremely compelling governmental interest in exercising jurisdiction over Generali, while the Czech Republic has no legitimate interest” in the case. California is home to 6,367 Holocaust survivors who have voluntarily registered with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum--the second-largest number in the United States, Kaplan said.
Pending appeal, the ruling means that Stern’s heirs can proceed to trial in their $135-million damage suit claiming that Generali acted in bad faith when it refused requests to pay off on policies he purchased starting in 1929.
Stern’s descendants say that they have made about half a dozen attempts to collect--starting in 1945 after the end of World War II.
Lisa Stern said she hopes Cooper’s ruling will inspire other states “to enact laws that will help the persecuted to recover stolen assets and their dignity.”
The Stern family’s suit, filed last February, was the first lodged in a U.S. court by a family alleging the wrongful withholding of life insurance benefits from policies issued to those who died in the Nazi death camps.
If the case ultimately goes to trial, it could generate not only a damage recovery for the Sterns, but lead to legal findings that could enable many other families to gain restitution on other policies, Shernoff said.
