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November 22, 2004 at 07:00 PM
Activists have set up a Web site to press a New York life insurer to settle a dispute over 19th century policies that protected slave owners against the loss of slaves.[@@]
The group, the Restitution Study Group, has posted the site at http://www.justice4one-justice4all.com
Although a federal judge in Illinois dismissed a slave policy action in January because he said the plaintiffs lacked standing, activists have filed a related suit in Chicago that is still pending, according to Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, the leader of the restitution group.
A New York Life Insurance Company predecessor company, Nautilus Insurance Company, issued the slave policies to slave owners in 1846 and 1847.
Farmer-Paellmann says New York Life settled a suit brought by descendants of the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide for $20 million shortly after the New York slave policy suit was dismissed in January.
Although the slave policies were issued in the mid-1800s, at a time when it was legal for slave owners to buy insurance to cover their slaves, some of the policies involved in the Armenian genocide case were issued as early as the 1870s, Farmer-Paellmann says.
