Stoop v Argentina

• Jurisdicción: Argentina
• Fecha: 09 Octubre 1958
• Emisor: Federal Court of Appeals (Argentina)

Argentina, National Court of Appeals in Federal and Administrative Cases for the Federal Capital.

Stoop

and

National Government.

War Effects of outbreak of On neutral property Economic measures against neutral persons and property The law of Argentina.

The Facts.The complainant, Marn Arnold Stoop, sued the National Government to recover possession of 2,434 shares of stock, and the dividends thereon, issued by the Compaa Telegrfica-Telefnica del Plata and owned by Bergwerke-Industrie und Handelsgesellschaft A.G. of Glarus (Switzerland), of which Stoop was agent in Argentina. These assets of the Corporation were seized as enemy property during the war by the Council on the Control and Disposal of Enemy Property and were being held on behalf of the Government which sought to retain its control over this property. The trial Court dismissed the action in 1954. The complainant appealed.

Held: that the decision under appeal must be reversed. Where property which had been sequestrated by the Government during war-time as enemy property is shown at a later date to be of neutral ownership, it must be restored to the rightful owners.

The Court said, with regard to the merits: In arguing for dismissal of the appeal, the Government contends that its seizure and subsequent detention of the property were acts undertaken in pursuance of its declaration of war against Germany and Japan in 1945, and justified by the laws of war. The respondent maintains here, as it has in previous cases of this type, that whatever the Executive Branch does in pursuance of the war powers represents a legitimate exercise of its prerogatives and that it is not within the province of Congress or the courts to review the propriety of such acts.

There can be little doubt that neither Congress nor the courts can properly interfere with the Executive Branch's methods of conducting a war, including its imposition of such economic measures as it may deem necessary in order to ensure the defeat of the enemy and its nationals. But as with every rule, this one has its exceptions. The right of the individual to the possession of his property would be a precarious thing at best if under the pretext of a declaration of war, which was moreover made in 1945 and terminated in that same year, the State could, more than twelve years later, assert its right to retain control over property which apparently belonged, not to an enemy...