THE Human Trafficking Legal Center, Freedom Network USA, and Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum are requesting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to affirm the default judgment entered in the case of seven construction workers who have sued Imperial Pacific International LLC alleging a forced labor and trafficking scheme.
The groups filed an amicus brief which is a legal brief in which someone who is not a party to a case assists a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case.
Represented by attorneys Bruce Berline and Aaron Halegua, the plaintiffs are Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan.
They sued IPI and its former contractor and subcontractor, MCC International and Gold Mantis Construction Decoration, both of which have already settled with the plaintiffs.
On May 26, 2021, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI entered a default judgment in favor of the workers plus post-judgment interest and attorneys’ fees for a total amount of $5.9 million.
After IPI’s motion for reconsideration was denied by the federal court, the casino investor appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
The advocacy groups filed their amicus brief on March 21, 2022.
“This case presents the question whether a company that has long perpetrated and profited from the use of forced labor can avoid liability by engaging in bad-faith discovery misconduct that exploits the same vulnerabilities that made its victims targets in the first place,” the brief said.
The groups said that they have an interest in maintaining trafficking survivors’ access to justice, which “IPI seeks to subvert by urging the court to depart from the normal pleading standards under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and impose an excessively stringent standard that finds no justification in the rules or relevant statutes.”
According to the advocacy groups, “Given the dearth of government enforcement, private suits are often a forced-labor victim’s only real source of justice. But defendants in such suits have every incentive to forestall an adverse judgment through a war of litigative attrition.”
They said courts “should have the full panoply of sanctions for litigation misconduct available to them. In those instances, like here, where despite repeated warnings, and repeated opportunities to comply with the district court’s orders, defendants continue to deny plaintiffs the discovery to which they are entitled, default judgment is entirely appropriate.”
The groups said the Ninth Circuit “should affirm the district court’s reasonable efforts to deter egregious litigation misconduct.”
The Human Trafficking Legal Center is a non-profit organization that empowers trafficking survivors to seek justice under the federal anti-trafficking statutes. Since its inception in 2012, it has trained more than 5,000 attorneys at top law firms across the country to handle civil trafficking cases pro bono, connected more than 470 individuals with pro bono representation, and educated more than 38,000 community leaders on trafficking victims’ rights.
Freedom Network USA or FNUSA, a non-profit corporation, is the largest alliance of human trafficking advocates in the United States. Its 91 members include survivors of human trafficking and those who provide legal and social services to trafficking survivors in over 40 cities across the U.S. In total, the FNUSA members serve over 2,000 trafficking survivors per year, including adults and minors, of both sex and labor trafficking.
Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum is a non-governmental organization that works transnationally to advance policies and laws that protect decent work and just migration; to strengthen workers’ ability to advocate for their rights; and to hold corporations accountable for labor rights violations in their supply chains.
