## Facts

- A certified class of Philippine nationals alleged they or their decedents were tortured, summarily executed, or “disappeared” by Philippine military or paramilitary forces between 1972 and 1986 during Ferdinand E. Marcos’s rule.
- After Marcos left the Philippines and relocated to the United States, victims filed civil actions seeking damages for the alleged abuses.
- The cases were consolidated in the District of Hawai‘i, where the court certified a Rule 23(b)(3) damages class.
- The district court conducted a trifurcated jury trial addressing (1) liability, (2) exemplary damages, and (3) compensatory damages.
- The jury found the Marcos Estate liable, awarded $1.2 billion in exemplary damages, and awarded approximately $766 million in compensatory damages.
- To determine compensatory damages for roughly 9,800 claims, the district court used a statistical sampling approach rather than individual trials for each claimant.
- Final judgment was entered in 1995, and the Marcos Estate appealed on jurisdictional, procedural, timeliness, liability, and damages-method grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether federal courts had subject-matter jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), 28 U.S.C. § 1350, over claims by foreign plaintiffs for torture, summary execution, and disappearance committed abroad by a foreign head of state’s forces.
2. Whether certification of a Rule 23(b)(3) class was proper given the size, transnational nature, and individualized damages aspects of the claims.
3. Whether the claims were time-barred or whether limitations periods were tolled during the Marcos regime.
4. Whether the Estate could be held liable on a theory analogous to command responsibility for abuses committed by forces under Marcos’s effective control that he knew of and failed to prevent.
5. Whether statistical sampling to determine aggregate compensatory damages violated due process or the right to a jury trial.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment for the plaintiff class.
- The court held that ATCA jurisdiction existed because the alleged conduct—torture, summary execution, and disappearance—constituted violations of universally accepted international law norms.
- The court upheld Rule 23(b)(3) certification, finding common issues regarding the alleged systematic abuses and Marcos’s responsibility predominated and that a class action was the superior method for adjudicating thousands of related claims.
- The court agreed limitations were tolled during the Marcos dictatorship due to extraordinary circumstances that prevented victims from effectively seeking redress; limitations ran no earlier than Marcos’s departure from power in 1986.
- The court sustained liability based on Marcos’s command role and effective control, permitting responsibility for abuses he knew of but did not prevent.
- The court approved the statistical sampling method for compensatory damages given the scale of claims and procedural safeguards supporting reliability, concluding it did not violate due process or the jury-trial guarantee.

## Legal Principles

- Under the ATCA, federal courts may exercise jurisdiction over civil claims by aliens alleging violations of specific, universal, and obligatory international law norms, including torture, summary execution, and disappearance.
- Rule 23(b)(3) certification may be appropriate in mass-claims human-rights cases where common questions about a defendant’s policies and responsibility predominate and aggregate adjudication is superior to individual litigation.
- Equitable tolling may apply when an authoritarian regime’s intimidation, practical immunity from suit, or related barriers make timely filing effectively impossible; limitations may begin when those barriers end.
- A superior exercising effective control may incur civil liability for subordinates’ abuses when the superior knew (or was treated as knowing) of the abuses and failed to prevent them, consistent with command-responsibility concepts.
- In exceptionally large damages classes, statistically valid sampling with meaningful verification and adversarial testing can be used to approximate aggregate compensatory damages without violating due process or the right to a jury trial.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit upheld a large class judgment against the Marcos Estate, recognizing ATCA jurisdiction for core human-rights violations, approving class treatment and tolling in light of dictatorship-era barriers, sustaining liability tied to command authority, and permitting statistically based aggregate compensatory damages for thousands of claims.


Hilao v. Estate of Marcos, 103 F.3d 767 (9th Cir. 1996)