The second-amended complaint two Lebanese citizens filed in New York under the Alien Tort Statute against officers of a Lebanese bank who allegedly laundered millions of dollars a year for Hezbollah — which reportedly used the money to finance terrorist attacks on civilians — relied on the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. A district judge ruled that the SAC stated a valid claim, because the convention qualifies as the kind of “universal, specific, and obligatory norm of international law” that would support a lawsuit under the ATS. But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, granting the defendants’ request for interlocutory review because the case presented complicated questions about international law, wound up reversing based on Section 29 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm (2010) (“an actor’s liability is limited to those harms that result from the risks that made the actor’s conduct tortious”). Nahl v. Jaoude, No. 19-1467 (July 30, 2020).
By Steven P. Garmisa