Doe v. Karadžić
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
192 F.R.D. 133 (2000)
Facts
A federal district court certified a class (Doe plaintiffs) (plaintiffs) for a limited-fund class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(1)(A). The plaintiffs’ class included all people who suffered from the cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment inflicted by Bosnian–Serb forces under the command of Radovan Karadžić (defendant) since April 1992. Thereafter, a subclass, the Kadic plaintiffs, sought to withdraw from the class or be given subclass certification. While that motion was pending, the United States Supreme Court decided Ortiz v. Fibreboard, 527 U.S. 815 (1999), which required a plaintiff to provide specific evidence of a limited fund before a district court makes an independent finding regarding the upper limit of the fund. The Doe plaintiffs urged the court to ignore the Ortiz formal-evidence requirement because Karadžić instructed his attorneys to no longer participate in the litigation, which made it unlikely that further evidence would be forthcoming. Alternatively, the Doe plaintiffs argued that Karadžić’s noncompliance with his discovery obligations was sanctionable under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b)(2)(A) and entitled them to a decree establishing the existence of a limited fund.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Leisure, J.)
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