Banks in France that allegedly swallowed up Jews’ accounts during the Holocaust have been slapped with a lawsuit filed in San Francisco.
Citing a California law that no company can profit from unfair competition, a San Francisco law firm filed suit last week against a string of French banks for allegedly bilking Jews during the Holocaust.
Lily Mayer, a Laguna Hills resident whose family owned a manufacturing plant in Paris prior to the war, is suing banks in France that “enthusiastically implemented anti-Jewish policies beyond those ordered by the Nazi regime,” according to the complaint.
The suit works in tandem with a similar case in federal court in New York against French banks that allegedly confiscated Jewish assets during the Holocaust.
The law firm of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, which filed the claim in state Superior Court in San Francisco, is also representing some plaintiffs in the federal case. Both cases could take several years to resolve, said Morris Ratner, an attorney with the firm.
Mayer, who was born in Germany and lived in Paris before World War II, was interned at a concentration camp in Gurs, France for five weeks in 1940. Her family fled to the United States in 1941. She doesn’t know what became of her family’s assets held by the bank Société Général.
The complaint was brought on behalf of Mayer and “the general public,” including Holocaust survivors and California competitors to the French banks who suffered as a result of the banks’ actions.
Ratner, who is Jewish, said separate California claims could be leveled at any other banks or companies that profited from slave labor or confiscating Jewish assets during the war. The Unfair Competition Act of the California Business and Professions Code prohibits companies from gaining an upper hand in the state by illegal practices.
The suit names six French banks and two American banks, Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan, which had branch offices in France during the Holocaust.
It will likely take several months before the banks respond. In federal court, the banks have asked the judge to dismiss the case. Ratner expects the banks to do the same here, saying “there’s no indication they want to settle.”