Tomakai Juda v. United States

In reading the excerpt from Ripstein, a specific citation stuck out to me. I wanted to use the space in this blog post to discuss the citation and its implications on Ripstein's broader argument on Libertarianism in the section about Causation and Indeterminacy. The citation is on page 35, section 2.42, in following sentence, "But the victim's role is no less real. In all but the most bizarre cases,^15 the accident could have been prevented had the victim stayed home, taken a different route, or whatever." 

The citation, 15, describes one of the "most bizzare cases" Ripstein sees as extending beyond indeterminacy of causation. In the citation, Ripstein writes, "See, for example, Tomakai Juda v. United States, (the plaintiff was forcibly removed from his home in Bikini Atoll to allow nuclear weapons testing, and then returned when radiation levels were dangerously high. In this case, presumably nothing the plaintiff could have done with prevented the injury.)

So, what is this bizzare case exception, beyond what Ripstein writes about it? Juda v. United States is an example of tort law pushed to its bizzare extreme, wherein the tortfeasor who caused indeterminate causal suffering on the plaintiff is the US Government. In this case, the US Government effectively created, imposed, and concealed the risk to the residents of Bikini Atoll. The Bikinians had lived on their ancestral homeland for upward of 3000 years, took no part in the Government's decision to select their island for nuclear weapons testing, were forcibly removed from their island, and were assured the island was safe to return to. 

Nowhere in this process can the Bikinians be faulted on their autonomy in creating exposure to risk. Unlike the pedestrian made victim to the drop of the worker's hammer, their presence on site was imposed upon them by forces entirely external to their way of living. The precautions that could have been made by any standard plaintiff, like looking up or being attentive of falling objects in the falling hammer example, are entirely absent in this case. Not only were the dangers of nuclear radiation fallout far beyond the understanding of the average person in 1948--let alone the isolated island residents of Bikini Atoll--but the US Government also assured them that it was safe to return. 

In other words, its not as though Bikini Atoll residents failed to effectively research radiation risks--they were misled by the very government that conducted the radiation tests. A government backed by scientific officials and paternalistic bureaucracy. This is the pivotal aspect of the case, to me, and where tort law under a Libertarian lens breaks down. The standard causal actor of the Libertarian causal minimalist state is entirely absent, and with it the returning of the consequences of one's actions on another's liberty.

Which brings me to the final piece of this blog, what happened to the residents of Bikini Atoll? After a series of court decisions, trust funds were established for Bikini Atoll residents totalling around $150 million from 1975 onward. The 2001 Nuclear Claims Tribunal ruled for around $530 million for Bikini Atoll residents, yet congress never paid. In 2012, the Bikini Atoll trusts held $8 million, yet only paid around $15,000 per family each year with little additional benefits. In 2017, the Trump administration lifted restrictions on fund withdrawals by the council of the trust. After that, council member Anderson Jibas, used the fund to buy a plane, construction equipment, two cargo ships, an apartment complex in Majuro, and 283 acres of land in Hawaii. As of March 2023, the fund has only $100,000 remaining.

As of today, Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable, its residents scattered across various other Pacific islands and abroad. This land is not replaceable--being severed from your millenia-old ancestral home is a permanent catastrophic cultural and economic loss. The story of the Bikinians demonstrates the extraordinary nature of Tomakai Juda v. United States, and why Ripstein considers it a "bizzare" case which extends beyond the standard of injury being called a "joint product."

(I want to note that the historical information on the result of the case was gathered over a short amount of time, and the information might not be 100% accurate. This blog post is a result of an internet spiral that I went on over the course of this evening.)

(Also, I learned that Bikini Atoll is the inspiration for Spongebob's Bikini Bottom.)