Maximo HILAO, Class Plaintiffs, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ESTATE OF Ferdinand MARCOS, Defendant-Appellant

103 F.3d 767 45 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 913 , 96 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 9090, 96 Daily Journal D.A.R. 15 ,085 Maximo HILAO, Class Plaintiffs, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ESTATE OF Ferdinand MARCOS, Defendant-Appellant. No. 95-15779. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted June 18, 1996. Decided Dec. 17, 1996. Mark Lane, Washington, D.C., for defendant-appellant. Robert A. Swift, Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Jon M. Van Dyke, Honolulu, Hawai'i, for plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Hawai'i; Manuel L. Real, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. MDL-00840. Before: FLETCHER, PREGERSON and RYMER, Circuit Judges. OPINION FLETCHER, Circuit Judge: 1 The Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos appeals from a final judgment entered against it in a class-action suit after a trifurcated jury trial on the damage claims brought by a class of Philippine nationals (hereinafter collectively referred to as "Hilao") who were victims of torture, "disappearance", or summary execution under the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos. We have jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and we affirm. FACTUAL…

The Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos appeals from a final judgment entered against it in a class-action suit after a trifurcated jury trial on the damage claims brought by a class of Philippine nationals (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Hilao”) who were victims of torture, “disappearance”, or summary execution under the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos. We have jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to. 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and we affirm.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

This case arises from human-rights abuses — specifically, torture, summary execution, and “disappearance” — committed by the Philippine military and paramilitary forces under the command of Ferdinand E. Marcos during his nearly 14-year rule of the Philippines. The details of Marcos’ regime and the human-rights abuses have been set forth by the district court at 910 F.Supp. 1460, 1462-63 (D.Haw.1995).

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Shortly after Marcos arrived in the United States in 1986 after fleeing the Philippines, he was served with complaints by a number of parties seeking damages for human-rights abuses committed against them or their decedents. District courts in Hawaii and California dismissed the. complaints on the…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

Because I believe that determining causation as well as damages by inferential statistics instead of individualized proof raises more than “serious questions” of due process, I must dissent from Part IX of the majority opinion. Otherwise, I concur.

Here’s what happened: Hilao’s statistical expert, James Dannemiller, created a computer database of the abuse of each of the 10.059 victims based on what they said in a claim form that assumed the victim’s torture. Although Dannemiller would have said that 384 claims should be examined to achieve generalizability to the larger population of 10.059 victims within 5 percentage points at a 95% confidence level, he decided that only 136 randomly selected claims would be required in light of the “anticipated validity” of the claim forms and testimony at the trial on liability that the number of abuses was about 10,000.

He selected three independent sample sets of 242 (by random selection but eliminating duplicates). Hilao’s counsel then tried to contact and hold hearings or depositions with each of the claimants on the first list, but when attempts to contact a particular claimant proved…