1939: Arbitration

Black Tom Terminal and Kingsland Cases.

On behalf of the Mixed Claims Commission, Mr. Justice Roberts of the United States Supreme Court acting as umpire delivered on June 15 his opinion in the sabotage cases connected with the Black Tom Terminal and the Kingsland Plant between Germany and the United States. The Commission found that Germany had offered false evidence on material issues in the earlier decision of 1939 and, discarding this evidence, pronounced Germany liable for the damages involved in these cases.

By the Treaty of Berlin (1922), Germany's liability for damages incurred in 1916 and 1917, while the United States was a neutral during the Great War, must be affirmatively proved to result from an act of the Imperial German Government or its agents. Accordingly, the two Governments set up a Mixed Claims Commission; and in 1927 the United States filed 153 claims amounting approximately to $22,500,000 exclusive of interest, on behalf of some 93 American nationals.

Pending since that time, the cases have been argued six times more or less completely. The first decision, in 1930, dismissed the cases as not involving German responsibility on evidence which the United States, in a petition filed in 1933, claimed to have been false, fraudulent and perjured. In June 1930, the Commission set aside earlier decisions and called for further evidence. At last, in 1939, all the evidence was examined and re-examined for a final determination of the cases and of Germany's ultimate responsibility; and adjudication resulted in the award of damages to the United States.

One of the latest difficulties concerned the withdrawal of the German commissioner in March 1939, after the case was under consideration by the tribunal — thus raising the question of the legality of further consideration without his presence. His action, the Commission decided, did not oust its jurisdiction, since the parties had submitted to its jurisdiction and the issues were already in process of determination. Before the decision was reached, the German Embassy announced that its country would ignore any decision.

After establishing the liability of Germany, the Commission in October approved awards of about $50,000,000 to cover the various claims as submitted by the American agent. On Dec. 14, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Co., a principal claimant, sought for itself and others in the Federal District Court (of Washington, D. C.) to force payment of the awards from a balance of $24,000,000 remaining in the Treasury from the German deposit account in the United States; while another claimant, the Zimmern and Forshay Assets Realization Co., attempted postponement of that award until its own claims were satisfied.