U.S. Appellate Court Voids Judgment Against Palestine for Lack of Jurisdiction (August 31, 2016) [1]
On August 31, 2016, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overruled [3] a $650 million verdict against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization for harm suffered by Americans through terrorist attacks in Israel. According to a news report [4], eleven families had brought suit against the Palestinian organizations under the Anti-Terrorism Act, alleging they were responsible for terrorist attacks that killed or wounded them and their family members. The Second Circuit found that the District Court had erred in exercising jurisdiction, noting that the attacks had occurred “entirely outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States” (emphasis in original) and there had been no evidence that Americans had been specifically targeted. The Court further stressed that while the Palestinian organizations maintained a mission in Washington, D.C., this did not suffice to make them “essentially at home” in the U.S. since the “overwhelming evidence shows that [they] are ‘at home’ in Palestine, where they govern.” It ruled that “the federal courts cannot exercise jurisdiction in a civil case beyond the limits prescribed by the due process clause of the Constitution, no matter how horrendous the underlying attacks or morally compelling the plaintiffs’ claims. The district court could not constitutionally exercise either general or specific personal jurisdiction over the defendants in this case. Accordingly, this case must be dismissed.”