vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #531 / Crime watch / Reading article...

A former U.S. consul general to the Russian Far East, who faced financial liability for a traffic accident in Vladivostok, has immunity and may not be sued in U.S. courts by the Russian citizen crippled in the 1998 car wreck, a U.S. federal court decided August 10.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Douglas Kent, 53, may not be sued civilly by Russia’s Alexander Kashin for the car crash in Vladivostok which left Kashin partially paralyzed. The court ruled that since Kent was driving his own personal vehicle for consular purposes as opposed to using a private driver it resulted in helping the U.S. government to save money, international reports said.

Kent was using his personal automobile and reducing the overtime expenses of his private driver ‘to serve the interests of Department of State and not his personal motives’, Reuters reported citing Judge Stephen Trott as saying. The Department of State had previously requested Kent have his vehicle shipped over to defray the costs associated with using a private driver.

“There is nothing for me to say. I was prepared for both variants of the verdict, the positive and the negative,” Alexander Kashin responded to the news in a telephone interview on Wednesday learning of the verdict from the newspaper reporter in his native town of Bolshoy Kamen. According to Kashin, he intends to phone his American lawyer to learn the details of the verdict.

Kashin, 31, suffered a severe neck injury and was paralyzed from below the armpits down in the October 1998 accident when the car in which he was a passenger collided with Kent’s Chevy sport utility vehicle. Police said Kent was responsible for the collision but Russian authorities failed to prosecute Kent criminally because of his diplomatic immunity. The diplomat left Vladivostok shortly after the accident.


See related stories at:
http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/2002/ISS339/News/upd28.HTM
http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/2002/ISS325/News/upd20_1.HTM
http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/1999/ISS189/text/upd7.html