In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation

• Decision Date: 01 July 2005
• Docket Number: Docket No. 00-9597(CON).,Docket No. 00-9595(CON).
• Citation: 413 F.3d 183
• Parties: In re: HOLOCAUST VICTIM ASSETS LITIGATION Abraham Friedman, Eliazar Bloshteyn, and Sofiya Bloshteyn Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Jacob Friedman, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, Union Bank Of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation, Credit Suisse, and Swiss Bankers Association, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

413 F.3d 183

In re: HOLOCAUST VICTIM ASSETS LITIGATION Abraham Friedman, Eliazar Bloshteyn, and Sofiya Bloshteyn Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Jacob Friedman, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees Union Bank Of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation, Credit Suisse, and Swiss Bankers Association, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 00-9595(CON).

Docket No. 00-9597(CON).

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued July 19, 2001.

Decided July 26, 2001.

Reissued as a published opinion July 1, 2005.

Bernard V. Kleinman, Esq., White Plains, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant Abraham Friedman

Eliazar Bloshteyn and Sofiya Bloshteyn, pro se, Brooklyn, NY, as Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Burt Neuborne, Esq., New York, NY, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Before: WALKER, Chief Judge, LEVAL, and CABRANES, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.¹

Plaintiffs-appellants Abraham Friedman, Eliazar Bloshteyn, and Sofiya Bloshteyn, are members of a class action brought against various Swiss banking institutions and entities (the "Swiss Banks") to obtain redress for their various actions in profiting from the Holocaust. They appeal from the November 22, 2000, order of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Edward R. Korman, Chief Judge) approving the Special Master's plan to allocate $1.25 billion in funds that have been obtained through an extensive settlement agreement that was entered into by the parties and approved by the district court.

Members of the class—who are by definition Jewish and non-Jewish persons that either were victims or targets of Nazi persecution or performed slave labor for Swiss corporations and their heirs—were allocated to one or more subclasses: the "Deposited Assets" class (those who claim ownership of deposit accounts withheld by the Swiss Banks after the War); the "Looted Assets" class (those who claim their property was looted by Nazis and then disposed of through the Swiss Banks); the "Slave Labor I" class (those who performed slave labor for German corporations whose profits were deposited with the Swiss Banks); the "Slave Labor II" class (those who performed slave labor for Swiss corporations); and the "Refugee" class (those who claim to have been denied entry into, expelled from, or mistreated while in Switzerland during the relevant time period).

After the settlement was approved by the district court as fair and reasonable, the district court appointed Special Master Judah Gribetz, Esq., to develop a plan to allocate and distribute the settlement proceeds. Appellants' objections to the resulting plan, as approved in the November 22, 2000 order, has prompted these appeals.

The district court has broad supervisory powers with respect to the administration and allocation of settlement funds, see Beecher v. Able, 575 F.2d 1010, 1016 (2d Cir.1978), and we "will disturb the scheme adopted by the district court only upon a showing of an abuse of discretion," In re "Agent Orange" Prod. Litig., 818 F.2d 179, 181 (2d Cir.1987).

Appellant Friedman has objected to the appointment of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. (the "Claims Conference") as one of the organizations that will process claims and distribute funds under the settlement. Friedman, who disagrees with the policies and mission statements of the Claims Conference, asserts that the Claims Conference is not suited to the task and that the district court failed to carefully consider the selection of the Claims Conference or to explore other organizations that might have been used instead.

We find no error in the district court's decision. The Claims Conference was chosen because of its lengthy experience with similar programs and because it had already been chosen to process claims and distribute funds under the related German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future" settlement (the "German Foundation"), which shares many class members with the present litigation. The efficacy of having one organization process the claims of individuals entitled to recover from both programs cannot be gainsaid. Friedman argues that the district court might just as easily have chosen the International Organization on Migration (the "IOM"), which is also processing claims and distributing funds for the German Foundation. In fact, the IOM was chosen to...