~snip~
The grisly details of the murder and dismemberment of four U.S. citizen contractors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have found their way onto U.S. soil in a dispute that may reach the Supreme Court. In the case, the estates of the four late contractors filed suit against Blackwater Security, a company with whom the decedents contracted to perform military escort services.
The estates attribute the contractors' deaths to the allegedly negligent and deceitful actions of the contracting companies, asserting claims of common-law fraud and wrongful death under North Carolina law. Blackwater, however, contends that the state law claims are pre-empted by federal law, and that no court, state or federal, has jurisdiction to review the claims. Interestingly, no court has yet ruled on whether Blackwater ought to be held financially responsible for the deaths of the four contractors; instead, in Blackwater Security Consulting v. Nordan (No. 06-857), the company is asking the Supreme Court to step in and determine where the next confrontation, if any, over the responsibility for the decedents' deaths will take place.
~snip~
Represented by Kenneth Starr of Kirkland & Ellis, Blackwater has now asked the Supreme Court to consider the issue, arguing that the remand order circumvented federal statutory and constitutional designs to preclude state-court jurisdiction.
The petition asks the Court to revisit the "derivative-jurisdiction doctrine," which states that where a state court lacks jurisdiction over a case that is removed to federal court, the federal court must dismiss rather than remand the case. In other words, Blackwater argues that a removal action should be dismissed rather than remanded in a situation where both the state and federal courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction to hear the case.
more:
http://biz.yahoo.com/law/070222/cf5283699702b94d59c7c7e0f14622e8.html?.v=1
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