Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Co. v. The Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia

729 F.2d 422, 1984 U.S. App. LEXIS 24663
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedMarch 9, 1984
Docket82-1521
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 729 F.2d 422 (Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Co. v. The Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Co. v. The Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia, 729 F.2d 422, 1984 U.S. App. LEXIS 24663 (6th Cir. 1984).

Opinion

KEITH, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a district court judgment, 543 F.Supp. 1224, which dismissed appellant’s counterclaim. The dis-. triet court held that the act of state doctrine as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Banco Nacional De Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 84 S.Ct. 923, 11 L.Ed.2d 804 (1964), precluded judicial inquiry into the validity of an expropriation by the Ethiopian government of shares in an Ethiopian business entity held by an American corporation.

Appellant, Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company (Kal-Spice) is an American corporation which, in a joint venture with Ethiopian citizens, established the Ethiopian Spice Extraction Company (ESESCO) in 1966, an Ethiopian based corporation. KalSpice owned approximately 80% of the shares of ESESCO. Kal-Spice also contributed capital, built a production facility, and trained ESESCO’s staff, which consisted of Ethiopian citizens. Production began in 1970 after several years of preparation, construction and training.

The Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia (PMGSE) came to power in 1974. As part of its program to assure that Ethiopian industries would “be operated according to the philosophy of Ethiopian socialism”, the PMGSE announced the seizure of “control of supervision and a majority shareholding” of a number of corporations, including ESESCO, in February 1975. As a result of the expropriation, KalSpice’s ownership interest in ESESCO was reduced from 80% to approximately 39%.

In December 1975, the PMGSE established a Compensation Commission. The Commission’s purpose was to compensate those claimants whose property had been expropriated. Kal-Spice claimed it was entitled to compensation of $11,000,000. In October 1981, the PMGSE offered KalSpice the equivalent of $450,000 in Ethiopian currency. Kal-Spice, however, has rejected the PMGSE’s offer. The PMGSE contends that Kal-Spice should have accepted the offer because: 1) Kal-Spice retains an interest in ESESCO of approximately 40% and 2) Kal-Spice carried expropriation insurance based on a total investment in ESESCO of less than $1,000,000.

A few months before the PMGSE’s expropriation program, Kal-Spice placed an order with ESESCO for the purchase of spices to be delivered to Kal-Spice in Michigan between November 1, 1974 and November 5, 1975. ESESCO shipped spices worth more than 1.9 million dollars to KalSpice. These shipments occurred in several installments, some before the February 3, 1975 seizure of ESESCO and some after that date. The post-expropriation shipments were drawn from inventories seized on the expropriation date.

According to Kal-Spice, it continued to make payments for these shipments for a while after the expropriation until it realized that the PMGSE did not intend to compensate it for the expropriated property. ESESCO, now controlled by the PMGSE, filed a breach of contract action against Kal-Spice, demanding payment for goods received by Kal-Spice. 1 Kal-Spice counterclaimed against ESESCO as the alter ego of the PMGSE, seeking, inter alia, damages for the expropriation of ESESCO.

Once the suit reached the United States District Court of the Western District of Michigan, the court decided that the act of state doctrine precluded adjudication of the claims against the PMGSE based on the expropriation of Kal-Spice’s interests. The district court further held that the Treaty of Amity between the United States and Ethiopia was “so inherently general, doubtful, and susceptible of multiple interpretation” that it could not be applied by a United States court to satisfy the “treaty exception” to the act of state doctrine.

*424 We disagree, and reverse and remand for the reasons set forth below.

The Act of State Doctrine

The act of state doctrine is an exception to the general rule that a court of the United States, where appropriate jurisdictional standards are met, will decide cases before it by choosing the rules appropriate for decision from among various sources of law, including international law. First National City Bank v. Banco Nacional de Cuba, 406 U.S. 759, 763, 92 S.Ct. 1808, 1811, 32 L.Ed.2d 466 (1972). The roots of the doctrine can be traced to Underhill v. Hernandez, 168 U.S. 250, 18 S.Ct. 83, 42 L.Ed. 456 (1897) where the Supreme Court held:

Every sovereign state is bound to respect the independence of every other sovereign state, and the courts of one country will not sit in judgment on the acts of the government of another done within its own territory. Redress of grievances by reason of such acts must be obtained through means open to be availed of by sovereign powers as between themselves.

Thus, the Supreme Court’s decision in Underhill was a recognition that generally the courts of one nation will not sit in judgment on the acts of another nation when those acts occur within the latter’s borders.

The modern restatement of the doctrine is contained in Banco Nacional De Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 84 S.Ct. 923, 11 L.Ed.2d 804 (1964).

In Sabbatino the Court stated:

[T]he Judicial Branch will not examine the validity of a taking of property within its own territory by a foreign government, extant and recognized by this country at the time of the suit, in the absence of a treaty or- other unambiguous agreement regarding controlling legal principles, even if the complaint alleges that the taking violates customary international law.

376 U.S. at 428, 84 S.Ct. at 940.

Justice Harlan, writing for the majority in Sabbatino, noted that the act of state doctrine has “constitutional underpinnings.” These constitutional underpinnings, according to Justice Harlan, arise out of a recognition of the separation of powers doctrine and the fact that the executive branch is usually best equipped to deal with matters of foreign policy since this area often requires “political acts.” Moreover, action by the judiciary while the executive branch is simultaneously acting upon the same matter could potentially be embarrassing or detrimental to those executive efforts.

However, after Sabbatino, the Court began to limit the breadth of the act of state doctrine and ruled that United States courts could be the proper forum for the adjudication of expropriation claims in certain circumstances. In First National City Bank v. Banco Nacional de Cuba, 406 U.S. 759, 92 S.Ct. 1808, 32 L.Ed.2d 466 (1972) (Citibank) the Court ruled that expropriation claims may be heard as set-offs in some circumstances. A plurality of the Court in Citibank

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729 F.2d 422, 1984 U.S. App. LEXIS 24663, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kalamazoo-spice-extraction-co-v-the-provisional-military-government-of-ca6-1984.