Turns out our timing was good: On March 18, Alexandria federal district court judge Gerald Lee of the Eastern District of Virginia issued a major ruling on the question of contractor immunity. In a case involving claims that CACI International tortured Iraqi detainees in interrogations, Judge Lee denied CACI’s motion to dismiss on three different theories of immunity. He found that the tort claims against CACI did not interfere with separation-of-powers doctrine and ruled that additional discovery was necessary to determine whether CACI’s actions were protected because of its role as a contractor for the U.S. military. “The parties must conduct discovery to determine whether the interrogations here constitute ‘combatant activities,’” the judge wrote.
CACI’s counsel, William Koegel, Jr., of Steptoe & Johnson, told the Litigation Daily that he has filed a notice of appeal of Judge Lee’s ruling with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He also said that he and plaintiffs counsel Burke last month argued immunity issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That appeal involves summary judgment rulings in two cases decided by D.C. federal district court judge James Robertson, who established a new test for the protection afforded contractors under the ‘combatant activity’ exception, which preempts tort claims against the military. Williams & Connolly represents the contractor L-3 Communications in both the D.C. and Alexandria cases.
