A group of litigants who are suing the government are urging Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the federal district court in Washington to keep in place a series of rulings in a high-profile state secrets case that recently settled for $3 million.
The litigants, including the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, said in court papers filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Lamberth's rulings are important for application in other cases. Justice Department attorneys want Lamberth to vacate the rulings, saying that they have no precedential value.
Lamberth’s rulings deal with whether a federal district judge may decline, in a state secrets case, to give a high degree of deference to the government’s assertion of the privilege when the government is accused of making misrepresentations to the court; and whether a judge can determine that lawyers in a state secrets case have a “need to know” certain confidential information. (Justice Department lawyers say the judiciary cannot make that determination, only the executive branch.)
In the underlying case, former drug enforcement agent Richard Horn in 1994 sued a CIA officer and a State Department official in a complaint that alleged the defendants unlawfully intercepted Horn’s communication while he was serving in Burma. The case has dragged on amid a dispute about the state secrets privilege.
A settlement in the case, where the government has agreed to pay $3 million to Horn, was announced last week. Government lawyers said the settlement, which was reached while Justice appealed Lamberth’s rulings to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was not an admission of liability.
Alan Kabat of Washington’s Bernabei & Wachtel, joined by Jon Eisenberg of Oakland’s Eisenberg and Hancock, filed an amicus brief this month in the case that urges Lamberth not to vacate opinions in July and in August that went against the government.
Kabat and Eisenberg, on behalf of three interested parties, including the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, said the rulings deal with novel legal issues and should be left in place. “The opinions will be a valuable resource for litigants and courts as these issues arise in other cases,” the lawyers said in court papers.
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