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Oklahoma Supreme Court Rejects Reparations Claim for Tulsa Race Massacre
[LI] The court rejected the "new ’unlimited and unprincipled’ form of liability" siding with the massacre victims would have created.The Oklahoma Supreme Court today rejected a reparations claim from survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
The high court affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of the claims, which resulted in this appeal, as Legal Insurrection reported. The plaintiffs’ public nuisance claim alleged they "continue[d] to face racially disparate treatment and City-created barriers to basic human needs" after the massacre. The plaintiffs’ unjust enrichment claim "alleged that Defendants appropriated the name ’Black Wall Street,’ a moniker for the [destroyed] Greenwood neighborhood" in tourism materials "without returning any of those benefits to members of the community" and thus unjustly enriching themselves. OKLAHOMA SUPREME COURT’S HOLDING "We . . . hold that Plaintiffs’ grievances do not fall within the scope of our state’s public nuisance statute," the decision reads, "and Plaintiffs’ allegations do not support a claim for . . . unjust enrichment." The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the "lingering consequences" of the massacre created a public nuisance: "The continuing blight alleged . . . implicates generational-societal inequities that can only be resolved by policymakers—not the courts." "Today’s holding," the court continued, "is consistent with our recent public nuisance jurisprudence: expanding public nuisance liability to include lingering social inequities from historical tragedies and injustices runs the risk of creating a new ’unlimited and unprincipled’ form of liability." Related: Oklahoma Supreme Court: 2023-12-27 Federal Judge Sides with Osage Nation, Orders Removal Of 84 Wind Turbines Oklahoma Supreme Court: 2019-08-27 Oklahoma judge rules against drugmaker JNJ, orders $572M payment Posted by: Frank G 2024-06-13 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=701313 |