An American lawyer hired by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s eldest son Hun Manet yesterday cast doubt over a complaint filed in a United States’ court against his client by Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) official Meach Sovannara, saying the civil case had a large number of flaws.
Mr. Sovannara, who is also a US citizen, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of insurrection after a protest he was attending in Freedom Park in 2014 descended into a street brawl between opposition supporters and government-sponsored security guards.
He has filed a complaint in a US court against Mr. Manet and the Cambodian government alleging “torture through arbitrary, extra-legal and long-term detention.”
Christopher Beres, an experienced US trial attorney and former prosecutor with offices in Phnom Penh, told Khmer Times that the complaint filed in the US District Court of California in Los Angeles by Morton Sklar, Mr. Sovannara’s US lawyer, lacked credibility.
Mr. Beres and Mr. Manet’s American lawyer John Purcell have already filed a motion to the court to dismiss the case.
A major flaw in the case against Mr. Manet, a general in the armed forces, was whether the court has jurisdiction over a Cambodian citizen or foreign citizen, plus there was a lack of hard facts to support the case, he said.
“Mr Sklar, the plaintiff’s attorney, has misrepresented the court’s rulings and the procedural status of the case to the public,” he said. “As an officer of the court, he should know better. His public statements undermine his credibility and negatively impact the administration of justice.
“The plaintiff has not won anything; instead, the plaintiff has represented to the US court that he doesn’t have the facts to establish the court’s jurisdiction. It’s a wonder how the plaintiff’s attorney could in good faith file the complaint without the facts to support the court’s jurisdiction.
“At this point, the plaintiff has failed to supply any factual basis to the US court to be able to compel General Manet to participate in the litigation commenced by the plaintiff,” Mr. Beres added.
Getting foreign citizens to appear in US courts is no easy matter, and in a civil case like the one filed against Mr. Manet, the court has to decide on a number of factors, Mr. Beres pointed out.
“It’s a civil case and not a criminal case,” he said. “A civil case is begun in a US court by filing what’s called a complaint. A complaint contains allegations against the named defendant in the case.
“In the US legal system it’s almost too easy to begin a case in the US federal court system or the state court system, and what I mean by this is that a party can begin a case with allegations alone and there’s no requirement to support those allegations with a factual basis at the time of filing. They’re not substantiated in any way.
“So all that’s required is allegations and the court clerk will accept the complaint and then it goes on from there. But the factual basis that needs to be set to support allegations in any complaint happens way down the road. We’re not at that stage in this case – we haven’t really begun the case, although it has been formally initiated by the filing of a complaint. Really, nothing has happened.”
Mr. Beres, a veteran of the United States’ legal system, dismissed stories in some of the local media as uninformed and said people in the Kingdom should be aware of the facts about the case.
“I’d like the Cambodian public to understand how the process works in the United States. When a complaint is filed with the clerk of court, it goes to a judge who doesn’t even look at the complaint for factual basis, so there’s no factual basis given at the time of the submission itself – just pure allegations,” he said.
“The court then allows the case to proceed to the next step. Obviously in this case the defendant is General Manet, a Cambodian citizen. In any case involving a foreign citizen, the first question that the court must decide is jurisdiction.
“Does the court have jurisdiction or authority to compel that foreign citizen to appear in a US court? Can the court compel that foreign citizen into the federal court?
“In order for a US court to have jurisdiction or authority to compel a foreign citizen into its court, the court needs to be presented with certain evidence, and that’s the burden of the plaintiff.
“The plaintiff, for example, might say this foreign citizen has a home or property within that jurisdiction in the United States or he has a business within that jurisdiction in the United States. It’s for the plaintiff to demonstrate this to the court in order for the court to have any kind of authority over a defendant.
“The idea is that if you take benefits from the jurisdiction, if you own property or a home or you do business there, you’ve already submitted to the laws of the jurisdiction. General Manet did respond properly to the complaint itself.
“He did that by filing a motion to dismiss based on lack of jurisdiction to compel him into the US federal court system and his position is that he has no ties, no contact with this particular court in California – he does not have property there, he has no homes there, he has no bank accounts there. He has nothing there.”
According to Mr. Beres, not only does Mr. Manet have no ties that oblige him to appear in federal court in California, under US law Mr. Manet should have been given documents known in US legal terms as “service of process,” in other words personally handed documents informing him of the case.
There have been some media reports that US process server Paul Hayes attempted to hand documents related to the case to Mr. Manet when he was in the US in April and allegations that Mr. Hayes was assaulted by Mr. Manet’s bodyguards while trying to deliver those papers, but Mr. Beres says he is not aware of any ongoing criminal case related to the purported service of process.
“The issue before the court right now to decide is not the merits of the complaint – the allegations are not the issue right now,” he said. “The plaintiff’s case is based on the fact that General Manet was in California on a goodwill mission and apparently there was an attempt at service of process – someone has to personally deliver a complaint – to put General Manet on notice that there is a court case against him.
“General Manet’s position should be clear to all. He had no knowledge that this lawsuit had been initiated against him before he visited California. And he had no knowledge that someone was attempting to serve him papers when he was at functions in California. He learnt all about this when he saw the article in the newspaper on April 10, 2016.”