Quote:Dartz wrote:Complicated jurisdiction?
I just realised something re-reading that...
What jurisdiction would an American court have over an English university?
There is precedent for a country to bring charges against one of their own citizens who travel abroad and commit an act that the home country considers a crime, even if it is legal in the foreign country (mainly I'm aware of sex tourism laws, consider Norway which in 2009 passed a law stricter than the US's sex tourism laws, hiring a prostitute even where it is legal and everyone is an adult can result in a fine or months in jail if you are a Norwegian citizen).
As I understand it in cases like the example quoted, normally the home country would encourage the foreign country to investigate and prosecute (for wide ranging definitions of 'encourage'). There does seem to be precedent for putting terrorists on trial for actions that harm citizens or property of citizens even when the acts take place outside the country that the trial is taking place in; but my understanding is that this usually involved convincing the country the act occurred in to agree to the trial taking place. But my guess would be that the law in question provided provisions similar to those used against sexual tourism, and provided both criminal elements as well as a right to bring a civil case to allow the victim to have the one responsible pay restitution to cover all the expenses they'll now face (needing to buy customized clothing, unknown future medical complications, increased security concerns to deal with anti-wave harassment, etc).
If the law was passed in a hurry who wants to guess that the writing process likely involved repeated use of cutting and pasting from existing laws, with lots of "replace all" used to change terms in the original laws to variations on, "involuntary biomodification." That could result in a section from an anti-sex-tourism law showing up and stating that the act didn't have to occur in the US for the law to cover it. Most likely it would be trying to say that a US citizen could be charged if they traveled to another country, involuntarily biomodded someone there, and then returned to the US. But if the whole thing was written poorly a lawyer might look at it and say, "Huh, well going by the wording as-is as long as one party involved is a US resident or citizen..."
At first glance if the university didn't have any US sites or money held in US banks you might figure they'd shrug and say, "Yeah, good luck collecting on whatever award the court gives you." But if they had any kind of joint project with a US university or were members of a consortium with a US presence they'd likely want to protect those. Also, if they didn't fight the case chances are the family could pretty much win by default (so long as the law at least provided a chance they could win if it had been contested, if the law flat out did not provide any room for the family to bring a complaint they judge would likely throw out the case -- why should he or she waste their time on a totally invalid complaint). If the university had ruling against it that could be troublesome if they ever wanted to make purchases from a US company, send representatives to an event in the US, or simply didn't want to deal with the authorities showing up from time to time, "Say, Oxford had another shipment delayed while US Customs ensured none of it was going to you. Do you think you could clear that case up?"
Of course the same slapdash manner of putting the bill together in a hurry would likely be part of what would result in the Supreme Court later throwing it out. Likely the reason wouldn't be that it allowed bringing charges against someone over an accident (that's a big reason for having insurance, you can be liable for the results of an accident, generally on the theory that you should have been aware that accidents can happen and taken steps to reduce the risk and to be prepared to deal with one happening if the odds didn't work out in your favor). I'd likely guess that the court either ruled that the law had irreconcilable internal contradictions, such that it couldn't be fixed by saying, "Paragraph 5 is bad, it's null and void and if congress wants what paragraph 5 was trying to do it needs to write a valid replacement," or the court deciding it didn't like whatever provision allowed to prosecuting foreign acts (and watch as law students are provided with essay material for decades to come by the majority and minority opinions and the implications for other laws -- no matter how much, "No, no, a thousand times no, this ruling has no precedent on any other law, especially the sex tourism laws, we're only striking down this law," shows up in the rulings).
tl;dr? 1: Does the family have money to pay for lawyers? 2: Does the university have *anything* in the US that could be seized? 3: Yeah, this would probably involve politics at some point. Yay politics. :p
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