Less Immune

New law for the diplomatic set

In April 1974 the Panamanian cultural attache ran a red light in Washington and plowed into another car, permanently paralyzing one of its passengers, Dr. Halla Brown, 66. After 19 months of hospitalization and round-the-clock nursing care at home, her medical bills have exceeded $300,000, but she could never collect a dime from the attache. Two years later, a car driven by a Senegalese embassy chauffeur struck and killed a 19-year-old road worker in suburban Virginia. The embassy carried no liability insurance on the car, and the victim's family could not then bring suit for damages against the embassy's chauffeur.

Similarly, eight residents of Pelham, N.Y., had no way of suing even for medical expenses after they were bitten by a German shepherd owned by Barbados' Ambassador to the U.N., W.E. Waldron-Ramsey. When the village police chief threatened in 1975 to shoot the dog, Waldron-Ramsey warned against "possible international consequences."

These people all escaped going to court because of a centuries-old tradition that foreign diplomats are exempt from the host country's laws. There are now 19,000 people in Washington's diplomatic community and an additional 5,000 at the U.N. in New York City. All of them, including butlers, chauffeurs, cooks and maids, have complete immunity from U.S. law.

Now their privileges will be narrowed considerably by a bill newly signed by President Carter. It brings U.S. law into line with a 1961 international agreement on diplomatic immunity that has been adopted by most nations. The new law will grant total immunity only to ambassadors, attaches and other high-ranking embassy officials and their families --about half the diplomatic community in the U.S. But they will be required to carry liability insurance, so plaintiffs can at least sue insurance companies, and the companies can no longer use their clients' immunity to avoid payment of claims. Other embassy staffers will continue to have immunity only when on embassy business.

The new law will not solve the parking problem in embassy neighborhoods, however, because many members of the diplomatic community will keep their treasured immunity from parking regulations. Thus they can continue to double-park their cars, leave them in no-parking zones, ignore parking meters --and then tear up their parking tickets. This is no small privilege. In Washington it amounts to roughly 50,000 tickets a year, worth $300,000 in uncollectible fines. In New York City the total is truly staggering: 179,000 tickets in one year, worth $4,240,000.

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