Three Federal Judges Throw Out Fallujah Lawsuit

A panel of three federal judges has effectively thrown out the highly publicized lawsuit against Blackwater in relation to the ambush of four of its security contractors in 2004. The federal appeals court judges have ruled that Blackwater's contract that each of the men signed - requiring any disputes to be resolved in confidential arbitration and not in court - is valid and must be observed.

The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, which serves the area near Blackwater Worldwide's headquarters, has the story. The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond dismissed the petition filed by trial lawyer Daniel Callahan on behalf of shell companies that another trial lawyer set up in the names of the estates of the deceased.

Callahan planned to make millions of dollars profiting from the insurgents who murdered the four American military veterans, mutilated their bodies, and hung two of the bodies from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq, in March, 2004.

Blackwater spokesman Anne Tyrrell says that the federal appeals court has vindicated the company, and upheld the firm's contracts. "The federal courts have now honored those written agreements," Tyrrell says in the article.