Court Rulings

N-M-, 25 I&N Dec. 526 (BIA 2011) ID 3717 (PDF) (1) Opposition to state corruption may, in some circumstances, constitute the expression of political opinion or give a persecutor a reason to impute such an opinion to an alien. (2) For claims arising under the REAL ID Act of 2005, Division B of Pub. L. No. 109-13,119 Stat. 302, a showing of retaliation for opposing governmental corruption is, by itself,insufficient to establish eligibility for relief instead, an alien must persuade the trierof fact that his or her actual or imputed anticorruption belief (or other protected trait) wasone central reason for the harm. (3) In making the nexus determination, an Immigration Judge should consider: (1) whetherand to what extent the alien engaged in activities that could be perceived as expressionsof anticorruption beliefs (2) any direct or circumstantial evidence that the persecutor wasmotivated by the alien's actual or perceived anticorruption beliefs and (3) any evidenceregarding the pervasiveness of corruption within the governing regime.

Suit by landowners against independent contractors to recover for property damage allegedly done by defendants while they were engaged, under state contract, on highway construction project. The Circuit Court of Cabell County, John W. Hereford, Judge, entered summary judgment for defendants, and plaintiffs appealed. Affirmed in part; reversed in part; remanded with directions.

<p>No. 89 July Term 1889, Sup. Ct.; court below, No. 4 October Term 1888, C. P. in Equity.</p> <p>On August 22, 1888, G. J. Lillibridge, and John N. Lillibridge and Lucilla, his wife, filed a bill in equity against the Lackawanna Coal Company, Limited, averring that bjr a written agreement, dated March 24, 1883, made a part of the bill, the plaintiffs, with Mrs. Almira Lillibridge, demised to the defendant all the merchantable coal underlying a tract of forty-five acres in Blakely borough, Lackawanna county, the lessors being then the owners in fee of said land and coal; that the plaintiffs had since become the sole owners of the land aforesaid, and of the rights appertaining to the lessors under said agreement; that under said lease the defendant had mined out coal from one of the underlying veins, to such an extent that an open way, of great breadth, about twelve feet in height, and about two hundred feet beneath the surface of the land, had been made through said vein, from the northerly to the southerly side of said tract; that, within two years prior to the filing of the bill, the defendant had become the lessee or owner of about three hundred and fifty acres of coal, adjoining the plaintiffs’ land uporr the northerly side thereof, and was mining the last mentioned coal and carrying it through, under and across the plaintiffs’ land, by means of said open way, to its improvements for preparing the coal for market situated upon other property not belonging to the plaintiffs, thus unlawfully and wrongfully appropriating plaintiffs’ property for a road to transport said other coal; praying that, for want of an adequate remedy at law and to avoid a multiplicity of suits, an injunction might be granted, restraining the defendant from transporting said other coal through plaintiffs’ land by means of said underground way, and for general relief.</p> <p>By the agreement of March 24, 1883, recited in the bill, the plaintiffs and Mrs. Almira Lillibridge, parties of the fi