January 8, 2010 11:32 AM

Hijack Victims Sue Crowell & Moring

Posted by Zach Lowe

Two American victims of a 1986 hijacking are suing their former firm, Crowell & Moring, claiming the firm misled them about how rewards from a larger suit against Libya would be distributed, according to The National Law Journal, an Am Law Daily sibling publication.

The case, filed this week in state court in Los Angeles, is an interesting example of what can happen when the U.S. court system intersects with international terrorism and executive action, according to the NLJ. The victims, two sisters, were children when they suffered severe injuries in the 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan. Twenty people were killed and more than 120 wounded in the hijacking, which ended at the airport when Pakistani authorities stormed the plane. Years later, international authorities charged Libya with aiding the hijackers, and Crowell filed suit against Libya on behalf of every victim who signed up for the suit, the NLJ reports. 

This is where things start to get tricky. In order to participate in the suit--and get a share of any award--the victims had to sign a retainer agreement and a joint prosecution agreement stating that any recovery would be shared "on a sliding scale based on the type of injury and without regard to [the] nationality" of each victim, the NLJ reports. (The agreement also called for Crowell to receive a 25 percent contingency fee.)

The litigation was moving its way through the court system in 2008 when President Bush announced a treaty with Libya which settled all terrorism-related claims of U.S. citizens for $1.5 billion, the NLJ says. The treaty, which Bush enacted via executive order, resulted in the dismissal of the Crowell action.

Now the plaintiff sisters, Gargi and Giatri Davé, may have to split their share of the settlement pot (which could reach $12 million) with Crowell's other clients, the NLJ says. The sisters could have to forfeit up to 90 percent of their recovery amount, the story says. Their attorney, Lee Boyd in Los Angeles, says Crowell deceived the sisters by failing to inform them that a treaty could lead to a settlement of the case outside the court system--and that, in the event of such a nonjudicial deal, the sisters could have to split their settlement money with non-U.S. citizens. (The suit does not name Latham & Watkins, which represented a liaison group of plaintiffs that dealt with the Crowell team.)

Crowell says they hope to resolve the matter quickly. The firm says 30 lawyers have spent 11,000 hours on the case over the last five years.

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