KBR actually has the stones to try and get Jamie Leigh Jone’s suit against them dismissed on the basis that employees sign contracts in which they agree to resolve disputes and claims against the company through an arbitrator.
Somehow I don’t think felonies were being considered when they wrote that contract.
Much as I might feel otherwise when I open my cable bill, companies can’t rape people. That’s a person-on-person crime.
Now, certainly damages might apply, but that takes a lawsuit. Some lawsuits may be precluded by these arbitration agreements, but they certainly can’t ban all of them.
Yeah, not to say that KBR isn’t slimier than a slug’s ass, but that’s a pretty standard opening gambit when a company gets sued. If the company was in the wrong, they can be sued, no matter what they make an employee sign.
Remember, in Anglo-American jurisprudence there are broadly two types of litigation, “criminal” in which the government is prosecuting to imprison or fine an offender for a “breach of the peace”, and “civil” in which one party is suing another for monitary damages caused (or sometimes an injunction) as a result of the actions of the other party.
Here, she would likely be suing KBR for money damages as a result of bodily assault, a civil tort, and such claims would very likely be covered by a contractual arbitration clause.
This would be very different from a prosecution for rape (a felony), which would be brought by a prosecutor on behalf of “the people”, “the state”, “the Queen” or some other term characterizing the government as a whole.
I’m not so sure that’s true.
Well, literally it’s true – the company can be sued. But can a suit prevail if the company’s defense is: “We previously agreed with this employee that any disputes between us would be settled by arbitration, so this lawsuit of hers is barred by that agreement?”
I don’t know. What circumstances have to exist for a court to set aside that requirement and say, “Don’t care what your agreement said about arbitration; we’ll permit this suit to continue?”
I don’t know if it is the same everywhere, but I found this:
It’s true this is a tort suit and I don’t believe anyone was charged with any kind of assault due to the alleged suppression of evidence by KBR. I’d be very surprised in this instance if the court sides with KBR. Even though it is a tort the acts alleged by the plaintiff are in some part illegal. What makes even that issue murky though is that they all occurred in Iraq where as we’ve seen so far US citizens have murdered people with no consequence other than a loss of employment.
The government can also charge the corporate entity as something along the lines of an accessory to rape, which is a criminal charge.
If a supervisor, whose job it was to ensure that rapes did not happen, while acting in the course of his employment, allowed the rape to happen by shirking an affirmative obligation, or covered the rape up, or knew or should have known that the rape was likely to happen, he and the corporation can be charged.
I assume that Bricker, having subscribed to this thread, will be along to clean up the above paragraph, but my White Collar Crime final was a week ago and I have motions to write and a paper to finish by tomorrow, so any differentiation between the respondeat superior and the Responsible Corporate Officer approaches to criminal liability for the corporate entity will have to be done by those less flustered and more practiced than I.
I am kind of surprised that they were not trying to get 200 lashes for her, too…
The point of the contract clauses were to allow Blackwater and KBR to go along with business as usual. They are not designed to give justice, but to impede it. It has the feel of new car contracts . They now have clauses that deny your right to sue them and force you to an arbitration board they set up to get legal retribution. They are building roadblocks to a persons right to the judicial system .It is wrong.
When she was given a medical exam after the rape, the rape kit evidence was turned over to KBR. :smack: KBR lost the evidence. So, while a corporation did not rape her, KBR obstructed justice.
When all these no-bid contracts were set up with the provisional government, Paul Bremer ordered that contractors would be responsible only to the provisional government, not to the US, and not to any Iraqi authority. Even though sovereignty was later turned over to the new Iraqi government, contractors are still invulnerable to nearly all prosecution.
Assuming facts not in evidence – while I did post, I didn’t subscribe, so it’s a matter of luck that I saw this again.
As a former public defender, the number of times I had occasion to engage in study or exercise of responsible corporate officer theories of corporate criminal liability were pretty much precisely zero. Having thus disclaimer actual expertise, I’ll happily endorse the basic concept above – to the extent that a high-enough official in the course of his employment and for the benefit of his employer took criminal actions, criminal liability for the corporation could result – the devil being, of course, in the details.
They lost it deliberately? Or they made a mistake? If the latter, it’s hard to see how that could amoun to criminal responsibility. What’s the theory that permits that charge to stick?
If this is correct, is there some showing that the KBR arbitration contract contains “overly harsh” or “one-sided” terms?
Actually, according to a website run by Ms. Jones, the State Department had possession of the rape kit and it was sent to Washington.
I don’t know why this would be so, but this little fact has since been scrubbed from the website. Google Cache has it.
In my opinion, employees are usually better off arbitrating these sorts of claims. Yes, they lose the chance of a multi-million dollar jury verdict. But they get one huge advantage in return.
See, arbitrators get paid by the hour. Judges get paid a salary. If the arbitrator dismisses your case before trial, it means less money for him or her. If the judge dismisses your case before trial, it means less work but the same amount of money.
Guess who dismisses cases before trial more frequently: judges or arbitrators?
Depends who selects the arbitrators and pays for the board. The auto dealers set up the arbitration board and they have a huge winning percentage.
I don’t know anything about that. The vast majority of employment disputes in the U.S. that are arbitrated go through either AAA or NASD (now FINRA).
The page also has video features from 20/20 and ABC News about Jones and another woman who was assaulted twice, once by her boss, and once by a State Dept. employee.
I am not disputing her assault claims, but I’d like you to look at the web site I linked. Why does she claim in one place that the rape kit was lost and claim in another that it is not lost?
Funny, I get the same feeling whenever I open the electric bill.