Constitutional Court rejects compensation claims by Baťa descendants.

The Constitutional Court has rejected a compensation claim filed by the descendants of the former shoe magnate Jan Antonín Baťa, the Czech News agency reported on Thursday. Baťa’s descendants are jointly seeking compensation to the tune of 56 million crowns for property that was confiscated from Baťa in 1947 under the post-war Beneš decrees for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. In 2007 a court cleared Bata’s name, ruling that no crime had been committed. Prague municipal court earlier rejected the compensation claim on the grounds that the restitution laws pertain to property confiscated after February 25th 1948 and cannot apply to a case that occurred a year earlier.