Justia U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs are victims of terrorist attacks and their family members who hold substantial unsatisfied money judgments against defendants Iran, North Korea, and Syria. The money judgments arise out of claims brought under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1605. In order to satisfy the judgments, plaintiffs seek to attach Internet data managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and, accordingly, served writs of attachment on ICANN. The district court quashed the writs because it found that the data was unattachable under D.C. law. The court rejected ICANN’s challenge to the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction, and assumed without deciding that local law applies to the determination of the “attachability” of the defendant sovereigns’ country-code top level domain names (ccTLDs), and without so holding that local law does not operate to bar attachment of the defendant sovereigns’ ccTLDs. The court concluded that those plaintiffs seeking to attach the underlying judgments in Haim I, Weinstein and Stern have forfeited their claims in toto. Those plaintiffs seeking to attach the underlying judgments in Haim II, Rubin, Wyatt and Calderon-Cardona have forfeited all but their claim grounded in the terrorist activity exception to attachment immunity. Finally, because of the enormous third-party interests at stake - and because there is no way to execute on plaintiffs’ judgments without impairing those interests - the court cannot permit attachment. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Weinstein v. Islamic Republic of Iran" on Justia Law

Diag Human appealed the district court's dismissal, sua sponte, of its claim for enforcement of a foreign arbitral award for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court found for Diag Human on both of the contested Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(6), issues here: Diag Human and the Czech Republic shared a legal relationship, and their arbitration “may” be governed by the New York Convention. Therefore, the Czech Republic is not entitled to sovereign immunity in this matter under the FSIA’s arbitration exception. Here, Diag Human’s relationship with the Czech Republic qualifies as a commercial legal relationship, and the arbitration at issue here arises out of that commercial legal relationship. Because a legal basis exists for federal courts to enforce this arbitration award, the court concluded that subject matter jurisdiction exists. Whether the arbitration award is final will be a question going to the merits of the case, as it could determine whether the arbitration award can be enforced or not. The court expresses no view on the matter. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Diag Human S.E. v. Czech Republic - Ministry of Health" on Justia Law

GSS appealed the district court’s dismissal of its second attempt to confirm a $44 million arbitral award entered against the Port Authority for breach of a construction contract. GSS first tried to confirm the award, but the district court found that it had no personal jurisdiction over the Port Authority. Then GSS filed its second petition, also naming the Republic of Liberia, which owns the Port Authority, as respondents. The district court again dismissed GSS’s petition, finding that issue preclusion barred relitigating its personal jurisdiction over the Port Authority and that GSS failed to demonstrate that Liberia was liable for the Port Authority’s alleged breach. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the claims against Liberia for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1330 et seq.; affirmed the district court's dismissal of GSS's petition against the Port Authority on sovereign immunities grounds; and concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by dismissing GSS's petition before allowing jurisdictional discovery. View "GSS Group Ltd. v. Republic of Liberia" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, fourteen Jewish survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust, filed suit against the Republic of Hungary and the Hungarian state-owned railway arising from defendants’ participation in - and perpetration of - the Holocaust. The district court dismissed the suit, concluding that the 1947 Peace Treaty between the Allied Powers and Hungary set forth an exclusive mechanism for Hungarian Holocaust victims to obtain recovery for their property losses, and that permitting plaintiffs’ lawsuit to proceed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1603 et seq., would conflict with the peace treaty’s terms. The court held that the peace treaty poses no bar to plaintiffs’ lawsuit, and the FSIA's treaty exception does not preclude this action. The court concluded, however, that the FSIA’s expropriation exception affords plaintiffs a pathway to pursue certain of their claims: those involving the taking of plaintiffs’ property in the commission of genocide against Hungarian Jews. Because those expropriations themselves amount to genocide, they qualify as takings of property “in violation of international law” within the meaning of the FSIA’s expropriation exception. Finally, plaintiffs’ claims do not constitute nonjusticiable political questions falling outside of the Judiciary’s cognizance. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Simon v. Republic of Hungary" on Justia Law

This appeal arose from a dispute between Ecuador and Chevron involving a series of lawsuits related to an investment and development agreement. On appeal, Ecuador challenged the district court's confirmation of an international arbitral award to Chevron. In this case, the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) includes a standing offer to all potential U.S. investors to arbitrate investment disputes, which Chevron accepted in the manner required by the treaty. Therefore, the court concluded that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1604, allows federal courts to exercise jurisdiction over Ecuador in order to consider an action to confirm or enforce the award. The dispute over whether the lawsuits were “investments” for purposes of the treaty is properly considered as part of review under the Convention on the Recognition of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention), 9 U.S.C. 201-208. The court further concluded that, even if it were to conclude that the FSIA required a de novo determination of arbitrability, the court still would find that the district court had jurisdiction where Ecuador failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that Chevron's suits were not "investments" within the meaning of the BIT. Likewise, the court rejected Ecuador's arguments against confirmation of the award under the New York Convention as meritless. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Chevron Corp. v. The Republic of Ecuador" on Justia Law

BSDL petitioned the district court to confirm an arbitration award rendered against the government of Belize. The district court entered judgment in favor of BSDL. The arbitration award arises out of the alleged breach by Belize of a 2005 agreement between Belize and Belize Telemedia Limited, BSDL’s predecessor in interest. The court concluded that the language of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(6), arbitration exception makes clear that the agreement to arbitrate is severable from the underlying contract. In order to succeed in its claim that there was no “agreement made by the foreign state . . . to submit to arbitration,” Belize must show that the Prime Minister lacked authority to enter into the arbitration agreement. Belize has failed to do this and therefore, Belize failed to carry its burden of establishing that BSDL’s allegations do not bring this case within the FSIA’s arbitration exception. The court rejected Belize's remaining arguments and affirmed the judgment. View "Belize Social Dev. Ltd. v. Government of Belize" on Justia Law

Validus, a foreign corporation, filed suit seeking a refund of excise taxes imposed under 26 U.S.C. 4371, which taxes certain types of "reinsurance." The government contends that “the best reading of the statute” establishes its applicability to reinsurance purchased by a reinsurer because such policies (known as “retrocessions”) are “a type of reinsurance,” and also that interpretation carries out Congress’s intent “to level the playing field” between domestic (U.S.) insurance companies subject to U.S. income taxes and foreign insurance companies that are not so burdened. Validus responds, however, that the plain text, considered in the context of reinsurance, and the statutory structure make clear that the excise tax does not apply to retrocessions, and further, the presumption against extraterritoriality resolves any doubt that the tax is inapplicable to Validus’s purchases of reinsurance from a foreign reinsurer. The court concluded that the text of the statute is ambiguous with respect to its application to wholly foreign retrocessions, and the ambiguity is resolved upon applying the presumption against extraterritoriality because there is no clear indication by Congress that it intended the excise tax to apply to premiums on wholly foreign retrocessions. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment on Validus's refund claims. View "Validus Reinsurance v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the dismissal of her complaint for failure to effect service of process as required under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1608(a)(3). In view of the resulting prejudice to plaintiff and the absence of any relevant prejudice to the Embassy of Zambia of allowing a further effort at service, the court concluded that that dismissal was too extreme a remedy because plaintiff's attempts at service came so close to strict compliance with the FSIA as to demonstrate a good faith effort at timely compliance amidst the sometimes confusing directions from the district court. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Barot v. Embassy of Zambia" on Justia Law

After Venezuela forcibly seized oil rigs belonging to the Venezuelan subsidiary of an American corporation, both the parent and subsidiary filed suit in the United States asserting jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1604, 1605-1607, expropriation and commercial activity exceptions. The district court granted Venezuela's motion to dismiss as to the subsidiary's expropriation claim, but denied the motion in all other respects. The court concluded that the district court correctly concluded that the parent corporation had sufficient rights in its subsidiary's property to support its expropriation claim; but the district court should have allowed the claim to proceed because the subsidiary's expropriation claim is neither "wholly substantial" nor "frivolous" under this Circuit's standard for surviving a motion to dismiss in an FSIA case; and the district court should have granted the motion to dismiss with respect the commercial activity exception where the subsidiary's commercial activity had no "direct effect" in the United States, which is required by the FSIA to defeat sovereign immunity. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part and reversed in part. View "Helmerich & Payne Int'l Drilling v. Bolivarian Rep. of Venezuela" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, three Iranian émigré siblings and the estate of their deceased brother, sought recovery for imprisonment, torture, and an extrajudicial killing that they allegedly suffered at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1999, as leaders in the Iranian pro-democracy movement.The three surviving siblings live in the United States. The district court dismissed the complaint, finding that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction, principally because of defendants’ foreign sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. 1602. The court rejected plaintiffs’ reliance on the Act’s terrorism exception, for “torture” or “extrajudicial killing” where the victim was a “national of the United States” at the time of those acts. The D.C. Circuit affirmed. The Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. 1350, does not confer any waiver of foreign sovereign immunity. View "Mohammadi v. Islamic Republic of Iran" on Justia Law