In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 16‐3723
ALEXIS VELJKOVIC and NICHOLAS DIMIC,
Plaintiffs‐Appellants,
v.
CARLSON HOTELS, INC. and REZIDOR HOTEL GROUP AB,
Defendants‐Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 15 C 2894 — Samuel Der‐Yeghiayan, Judge.
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ARGUED APRIL 12, 2017 — DECIDED MAY 23, 2017
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Before POSNER, ROVNER, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
POSNER, Circuit Judge. This suit is about a historic build‐
ing in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, called the Old Mill, and
its architectural renovation and expansion in 2013 to become
a Radisson Blu hotel. The lead plaintiff, Alexis Veljkovic, is a
U.S. citizen of Serbian extraction who lives in Illinois. His co‐
plaintiff, Nicholas Dimic, is a Canadian at present living in
Paris because he’s a member of the Canadian diplomatic
mission to France. The defendants are Carlson Hotels, Inc., a
2 No. 16‐3723
Minnesota company, and Rezidor Hotel Group AB, a Swe‐
dish company whose principal place of business is Brussels.
Rezidor is owned by Carlson Hotels, however—the two
companies do business together under the name Carlson Re‐
zidor Hotel Group; and so we’ll treat both defendants as one
and call it Carlson.
Although Carlson owns a hotel in Chicago, the entire
subject of this suit is a property in Belgrade known as the
“Old Mill” property. Built in 1902, the Old Mill is a historic
steam mill that the plaintiffs claim belonged to their ances‐
tors. It was confiscated by Tito shortly after he became the
ruler of Yugoslavia (which contained Serbia, now an inde‐
pendent country, as are the other former Yugoslavian
states—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Mon‐
tenegro, Kosovo, and Slovenia) in 1945. No compensation
was paid the owners of the Old Mill when the government
confiscated it. Indeed, Tito’s government declared the plain‐
tiff’s ancestors enemies of the state for having produced beer
for the occupying Nazis during World War II and helped
terrorists elude capture (accusations disputed by the ances‐
tors), and the new government sentenced those of the ances‐
tors who were still living to hard labor.
The nationalized Old Mill remained in government pos‐
session until, during the rule of Slobodan Milosevic (presi‐
dent of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and of Yugoslavia from
1997 to 2000), corrupt government bureaucrats sold the Old
Mill to private land developers. Through various transfers, it
ended up being owned by a firm in Belgrade named Prigan
Holding.
In or around 2011, the plaintiffs allege, Carlson began
planning with Prigan Holding to retrofit the Old Mill prop‐
No. 16‐3723 3
erty for a hotel. As a result of the retrofitting, the Old Mill
became the site of a four‐star, multi‐million‐dollar Radisson
Blu Hotel complex that adds many modern elements to the
Old Mill’s industrial frame. See Graft, “Old Mill Hotel Bel‐
grade,” http://graftlab.com/portfolio_page/old‐mill‐hotel‐bel
grade/ (visited May 12, 2017). Carlson doesn’t own the hotel
or the property it sits on—Prigan Holding does—but Carl‐
son is the licensor of the Radisson Blu brand, and a subsidi‐
ary of Carlson participates in the management of the hotel.
Since about 2000—ten years before the construction of
the new hotel—the plaintiffs’ families have been frantically
endeavoring to recover their rights over the Old Mill. In 2009
the family secured a major victory when a Serbian court an‐
nulled the declaration of the Veljkovic family to have been
enemies of the state, ruling that the convictions of the family
members had been the result of “staged trials” designed to
deprive them of their property. (We don’t know whether
members of the Dimic family, the co‐plaintiff, have been
similarly rehabilitated.)
The plaintiffs claim to be entitled not only to rights over
the Old Mill but also to damages for the use of the property
by Carlson and Prigan. The plaintiffs sued Carlson in federal
district court in Illinois (basing jurisdiction on diversity of
citizenship), charging Carlson with trespass, conversion,
conspiracy, unjust enrichment, constructive trust, and viola‐
tion of the Minnesota Deceptive Trade Practices Act, Minn.
Stat. Ann. § 325D.44.
Early in the district court proceeding the defendants told
the judge that they’d submit to the jurisdiction of the Serbian
Restitution Agency (SRA), which they said was empowered
by a 2011 Serbian law called the “Law on Property Restitu‐
4 No. 16‐3723
tion and Compensation” (Restitution Act for short) to de‐
termine the plaintiffs’ rights in the Old Mill property, includ‐
ing improvements, notably the hotel. The district judge, con‐
cluding that Serbia was a more appropriate site for the litiga‐
tion than Chicago, dismissed the suit on the ground of forum
non conveniens. See Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno, 454 U.S. 235,
257 (1981). He noted that Carlson had consented to the
SRA’s exercising jurisdiction over its dispute with the plain‐
tiffs and had even agreed not to challenge any determination
by the SRA that might be adverse to Carlson. The judge fur‐
ther noted that given the location of the hotel at issue in the
case (Belgrade), Serbian law was bound to play a large (in‐
deed the dominant) role in the adjudication and is not a
body of law with which American lawyers and judges are
familiar.
The plaintiffs appeal, arguing that their “family interest”
in the Old Mill entitles them to sue for damages to or
restoration of the property. And it’s true that their ancestors
were treated unjustly by the governments of Tito and
Milosevic. But the plaintiffs have produced no documentary
evidence that they have inherited the land, and as we said in
In re African‐American Slave Descendants Litigation, 471 F.3d
754, 759 (7th Cir. 2006), “When a person is wronged he can
seek redress, and if he wins, his descendants may benefit,
but the wrong to the ancestor is not a wrong to the
descendants. For if it were, … a person whose ancestor had
been wronged a thousand years ago could sue on the
ground that it was a continuing wrong and he is one of the
victims.”
The plaintiffs are not seeking damages for old wrongs
against their ancestors, however, but just for wrongs done to
No. 16‐3723 5
them, the plaintiffs, after 2009, the date of the Serbian court
judgment that rehabilitated Veljkovic’s ancestors. They al‐
lege that Carlson, knowing the family was on the brink of
recovering the Old Mill, colluded with Prigan Holding to
frustrate their efforts. But this is a dispute more appropriate‐
ly addressed by the Serbian Restitution Agency than by the
federal district court in Chicago. Although one plaintiff, Vel‐
jkovic, is an American citizen and a resident of Illinois (the
other being a citizen of Canada but a resident of Paris), no
aspect of the plaintiffs’ dispute with the defendants has any
relation to Illinois. Carlson is a Minnesota resident that
maintains hotels in Illinois (one in Chicago, as we noted ear‐
lier) but nothing connected to this lawsuit, and its subsidiary
Rezidor, the other defendant, is a Swedish company that al‐
so has no presence in Illinois. See Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134
S. Ct. 746 (2014).
As for the alternative decider of the dispute between the
parties—the SRA—it’s true it’s not a court; but nonjudicial
modes of dispute resolution are common, and proper if ade‐
quate, as they often are, see, e.g., Lueck v. Sundstrand Corp.,
236 F.3d 1137 (9th Cir. 2001), and no reason has been given
us to doubt the adequacy of the SRA—an agency created to
make reparations to persons (and their successors) whose
land had been confiscated by Tito. The plaintiffs argue that
the SRA lacks jurisdiction over Carlson, but the Restitution
Act defines a party as anyone “with a legal interest.” They
further complain that the SRA’s remedies are so meager as
to amount to “no remedy at all,” but the Act authorizes the
SRA to give money reparations in the form of Serbian bonds,
to return commercial buildings, or to supervise profit‐
sharing arrangements as appropriate. Those are substantial
remedies.
6 No. 16‐3723
The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.