An appeals court upheld the right of an Egyptian Jewish family to sue Coca Cola for the use of the family’s former property in Egypt. Egyptian authorities confiscated properties belonging to the Bigio family in the early 1960s because the family was Jewish. The Egyptian government later ordered the property returned, but the state-owned company that controlled the property refused and instead transferred the property to a company held in part by Coca Cola. A U.S. district court in New York dismissed a lawsuit against Coca Cola, saying the case was properly Egypt’s jurisdiction. The Bigios appealed and the second circuit federal appeals court ruled in their favor on May 9, returning the case to the district court. An amicus brief to the appeals court from the Zionist Organization of America argued that anti-Semitism was too deeply embedded in the Egyptian system to allow the Bigios a fair hearing there.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
