Appeals court refuses to reinstate lawsuit by Corrie family

SEATTLE — A federal appeals court panel on Monday refused to reinstate a lawsuit brought against Caterpillar Inc. by the family of peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer.

Because the U.S. government pays for all Caterpillar bulldozers sold to Israel, the lawsuit presented foreign policy questions best left to the White House and Congress, said the three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“A court could not find in favor of the plaintiffs without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, United States foreign policy toward Israel,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote. “It is not the role of the courts to indirectly indict Israel for violating international law with military equipment the United States government provided and continues to provide.”

Corrie, 23, of Olympia, was run over in 2003 by a 60-ton Israeli bulldozer as she stood before a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip. Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, sued Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar, which manufactured the bulldozer, seeking to hold the company civilly liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations — the destruction of civilian homes.

Four Palestinian families whose relatives were killed or injured when the Israeli Defense Forces flattened their homes joined the Corries in filing suit.

The appeals court judges agreed with U.S. District Judge Franklin D. Burgess in Tacoma, who ruled in 2005 that the case posed political questions that the Constitution reserves for the executive and legislative branches. The key issue, they said, was that after the Israeli army buys bulldozers from Caterpillar, it is reimbursed by the Department of Defense through its Foreign Military Financing program.

The courts could not find Caterpillar liable for taking part in sales financed and approved by the U.S., Wardlaw held.

The Corries said they were disappointed, but that they would continue to work in their daughter’s memory.

Rachel Corrie’s story and diaries became the off-Broadway play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.”

“For our family, the court proceedings were trying to bring some accountability for Cater­pillar’s role in human rights violations,” said Craig Corrie. “Of course, Caterpillar always has the option to act responsibly and could do that by ceasing to provide Israel these bulldozers no matter how they are financed.”

Gwynne Skinner of Seattle University’s Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said they were considering whether to appeal. Skinner said that while she believes the U.S. government probably paid for the bulldozers, she disagreed with the panel’s finding that evidence to that effect was “undisputed.”

She also said open questions remain about the extent to which the government’s reimbursements of Israel constitutes a U.S. policy supporting the destruction of Palestinian homes, or whether the reimbursements are rubber-stamped with no real scrutiny.