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Denial of Request by 9/11 Plaintiffs for Moussaoui transcripts

A Federal Appeals Court has ruled that a Virginia federal court judge did not have the authority last April to order the U.S. government to hand over evidence from the criminal trial of Zacarias Moussaoui to the families of 9/11 victims for use in their civil lawsuits against airline companies and others. The 9/11 Plaintiffs requested grand jury transcripts from Moussaoui’s criminal trial. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the New York federal court alone has the authority to order discovery in the civil cases as Congress limited jurisdiction of the actions to the Southern District of New York. The 4th Circuit held that the plaintiffs could return to the Eastern District of Virginia to request a transfer of the grand jury transcripts to the Southern District of New York, but that the New York judges must control the general discovery process. The case was decided on March 14, 2007.

See http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/064611.P.pdf

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am and is filed under Jurisdiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.