Prisoner lawsuits generally run the gamut from complaints about lumpy mashed potatoes at dinner to allegations of illegal punishments performed by prison staff. So, it’s a bit unusual to see a prisoner complaint based on the Trading With the Enemy Act, 50 App. U.S.C. § 1 et seq. The TWEA, as many readers will know, is the act that serves as the basis for sanctions imposed by the United States on Cuba and North Korea.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia recently had the occasion to dismiss just such a case, although the dismissal order provides only a hint at the creative prisoner jurisprudence involved:

Plaintiff, a prisoner at the United States Penitentiary Lee in Jonesville, Virginia, sues the United States under the Trading with the Enemy Act … for “the return of any and all negotiable instruments forwarded to agents of the United States of America and transferred to the Alien Property Custodian and/or deposited in the Treasury of the United States of America.”

Astute history buffs will no doubt know that the office of the Alien Property Custodian was eliminated in 1966 by President Johnson’s Executive Order 11281, so the prisoner’s claims relate to events from over 40 years ago by a now abolished federal office. It is indeed hard to imagine what individual claim he might have had arising under actions by the Alien Property Custodian that long ago. The district court simply called the claim “delusional” and dismissed it.

Still, I have to admit some curiosity over the imaginative process that led the plaintiff prisoner to spin a claim under the TWEA. Section 9 of the TWEA of claims by non-enemies who can demonstrate an interest in property seized under the act. In what seized property could the prisoner possibly have claimed an interest? The Bayer trademark? The Hamburg-American Line Building in Manhattan?

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