Mercenary firm sues families of murdered employees*

Posted by Joshua Holland at 11:06 AM on January 20, 2007.

The reverberations from those four Blackwater mercenaries brutally killed in Fallujah have traveled far and wide -- sparking, among other events, the horrific "Siege of Fallujah" that Dahr Jamail called, simply, "Our Guernica."

The families of the mutilated Blackwater contractors later sued the firm, alleging that various cost-cutting measures ultimately led to the men's deaths, and that those measures amounted to breach of contract.

Now, Blackwater's lashing out at the attorneys who brought the suit, in what appears to be kind of a trend of intimidation among private military firms …

Private security contractor Blackwater USA is seeking $10 million from the attorney representing the estates of four employees killed and mutilated in Iraq, arguing their families breached the security guards' contracts by suing the company for wrongful death.

Blackwater has also asked a federal court to move the dispute into arbitration, having failed so far in its ongoing efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Arbitration is necessary "in order to safeguard both (Blackwater's) own confidential information as well as sensitive information implicating the interest of the United States at war," attorneys for Blackwater Security Consulting, a unit of Moyock-based Blackwater USA, wrote in a petition filed December 20.

Dan Callahan, a California-based attorney representing the families, called the claim "appalling."

"This is a shock-and-awe tactic," Callahan said Friday. Blackwater's attorneys declined to comment.

The four families, represented by estates administrator Richard Nordan, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater in January 2005 in state court. Family members argue Blackwater broke contractual obligations and used cost-saving measures that ultimately led to the deaths of the four men.

Blackwater's counterclaim for $10 million specifically names Nordan and not the estates or the men's families.

"The $10 million is a scare tactic," said Katy Helvenston, mother of Scott Helvenston, one of the dead Blackwater employees. "I'm not concerned about that at all because the whole thing's a farce. It's just another excuse to delay."

*No, they didn't actually sue the families themselves, but I figure they chose the strategy that they did because they didn't want to generate headlines like the one on this post.

Tagged as: blackwater, contractors, iraq

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.