In the end, it wasn’t political conspiracy that defeated a Sikh group’s attempt to hold an Indian official accountable for human rights violations but a simple case of mistaken identity, a federal appellate court ruled.
In an opinion by Judge Richard Posner, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday affirmed a Milwaukee judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit by Sikhs for Justice, because it was never served on Parkash Singh Badal, chief minister of Punjab.
Not that Posner wasn’t a bit intrigued with the case. He starts off his 15-page opinion (that includes two citations to Proof & Hearsay, we must note) with the observation, “This appeal presents a single issue, which is whether the defendant was served with process; yet the case could be the basis for a novel of international intrigue.”
But not the basis for a winning appeal. Posner called the plaintiffs’ theories “too unsubstantiated and
implausible to counter the abundant evidence that the defendant was never at the high school on August 9 and therefore was never served.”
Posner thinks it would have been reasonable to grant another 30 days for more discovery, but not a reversible error that U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman thought otherwise.
“We are reluctant to become enmeshed in challenges to a district court’s management of pretrial discovery — especially a challenge complaining that the district judge imposed deadlines that were too tight; for the greater problem in the management of pretrial discovery is the common failure to impose tight deadlines.”
Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) claim Badal is responsible for persecuting Sikhs in Punjab. When the New York-based organization learned Badal was coming to Milwaukee for a wedding. The weekend before the wedding, a gunman killed six worshipers at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, and Badal found himself the subject of local news media interviews.
SFJ hired a West Allis process server to serve the lawsuit on Badal at Oak Creek High School, where a forum had been organized by the U.S.Department of Justice, assuming Badal would attend. The process server showed up, served the papers on a person he swore was Badal and left.
But lawyers for Badal later produced an Illinois man, hired to be an Punjabi interpreter at the event, to say he was the person who got the papers. The process servers expected to find an older man with a white beard, a turban and glasses — and the interpreter indeed had some — Posner would say much — resemblance to Badal.
“The evidence of mistaken identity is compelling — indeed overwhelming,” Posner wrote. The opinion even includes photos of each man in an appendix. Posner doesn’t call the process server a liar, but notes that eye witness identification has increasingly been shown to be less reliable than it was long believed to be, especially between different ethnic groups..
The server “is not an Indian, and not a Sikh. To the non-Sikh the salient features of a Sikh man are abundant facial hair and a turban.” Posner wrote. “If the man is elderly, the beard will be white. The photo that (the process server) was carrying to enable him to spot the defendant showed an elderly man with a long white beard and a turban.”
And so, Posner concludes, it was reasonable for the process server to think he had served Badal.
On Friday, Sikhs for Justice announced the group plans to appeal the 7th Circuit decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Source: Journal Sentinel