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Man to sue over marijuana car
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Mexican national may sue the U.S. government for
selling him a car with a hidden load of marijuana, and then arresting him when
he tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in it, a federal appeals court has
ruled.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the government's argument that it
should be immune from Jose Aguado Cervantes' lawsuit was "so off the mark
as to be embarrassing."
The appellate panel reinstated Cervantes' negligence claims against the
government for allegedly failing to find and remove the drugs from the car he
purchased in July of 1999 at a U.S. Marshals Service Auction in San Diego,
California.
Four months earlier, the car was seized by the Immigration and Naturalisation
Service after it was used to transport illegal immigrants into the United States
but agents apparently failed to notice 199 pounds of marijuana secreted in its
bumpers, the court said.
But the justices decided that Cervantes, a resident of Mexico, could not sue
for false imprisonment or false arrest because U.S. Customs agents who found the
pot when Cervantes tried to cross the border from Mexico to the United States in
October of 1999 "had reasonable cause to believe his arrest was
lawful."
Cervantes spent three and a half months in jail, charged with drug smuggling.
He was released after U.S. investigators realised that the marijuana, which had
been welded into the bumper, was so decomposed that it could not have been
placed there just months earlier, Cervantes' attorney Stephen Estey of San Diego
said.
Estey called the court's decision to overturn the lower court
"refreshing."
"My client is a 67-year-old grandfather and has never had so much as a
parking ticket in his life," Estey said. "He has a remarkably good
outlook ... it was a rough ride."
The justices criticised prosecutors for failing to heed their earlier order
to settle the case, saying the government "thumbs its nose at its
obligation to see that justice is done."
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego declined to comment
because the case was still being litigated
