33
information should attach to the good name and honor of Mr. José
María Cantos.
d)
As for costs and expenses, the Commission asked the Court to set the
appropriate sum as reimbursement for the travel expenses of José
María Cantos, Susana J. Albanese, Germán J. Bidart Campos, Emilio
Weinschelbaum and the individuals offered as witnesses, including
their accommodations, for the period from May 1996 to the year 2002,
for the trips they made to attend the hearings with the Inter-American
Commission and the Inter-American Court. The figure should be
arrived at on the basis of equity considerations, as the airplane and
hotel vouchers associated with the trips were not preserved. The
Commission petitioned the Court to determine, according to its own
criterion and the case law that has been the basis of its decisions, the
fees for Mr. Cantos’ attorneys, based on considerations of equity. It
asked that the Court take into account that Susana J. Albanese,
Germán J. Bidart Campos and Emilio Weinschelbaum began working
on the case in May 1996, when the original complaint was filed with
the Commission; it also asked the Court to consider the complexity of
the case and the fact that the proceedings before the Court followed
directly on the Commission’s own proceedings.
e)
As to the manner of compliance, application of Convention Article 68
notwithstanding, the Commission asked the Court not to order that the
case be returned to the domestic courts for determination of
compensatory damages. Its petition was based on the fact one of two
situations was possible were the matter to be sent back to the
domestic courts:
1.
Proceedings in the case would begin in a federal lower court,
continue in a federal appeals court and ultimately end up in the
Supreme Court; or
2.
the proceedings could begin to follow the normal course, but
then move directly to the Supreme Court by virtue of an appeal per
saltum.
In the first scenario, they argue that the life cycle of the case would
outlive Mr. Cantos, especially when one considers that, acting as court
of first instance, the Supreme Court took ten years to discover that the
statute of limitations had run and that the action was, therefore, “time
barred”; in the second scenario, it is highly likely that the bench of the
Supreme Court will be exactly the same bench that delivered the 1996
ruling, there being no guarantee of that Court’s eventual recusal. They
argue, further, that there are two systems for the per saltum
procedure in law: one praetorian and the other legal for private
situations, and that with either one the tendency is for the Supreme
Court to pick and choose cases selectively.
Allegations of the victim’s representatives
On the issue of reparations, costs and expenses, the victim’s representatives made
the following points:
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents