On January 22, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed the appeal by defendant/appellant Arab Bank PLC and denied the defendant’s petition for a writ of mandamus. The court found that the sanctions order was not a reviewable collateral order. As such, the court lacked jurisdiction.
The plaintiffs were pursuing claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Alien Tort Claims act, alleging that the defendant bank knowingly and purposefully supported foreign terrorist organizations by providing financial services to those organizations. The lead plaintiff is Courtney Linde, the widow of John Linde Jr., who was killed on October 15, 2003, while guarding diplomats traveling in the Gaza Strip. The plaintiffs sued in federal court in 2004. More than 100 families and 700 individuals are seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Arab Bank in the lawsuits.
The defendant appealed from an order that imposed discovery sanctions against it. In July 2010, U.S. Senior District Court Judge Nina Gershon concluded that Arab Bank was hiding behind international bank secrecy laws. In her decision, Gershon said she would instruct the jury to infer that the account records Arab Bank refused to turn over belonged to terrorists, and that Arab Bank knowingly and purposefully provided financial services to them. She also said the bank could not introduce any evidence to otherwise explain its failure to produce the records -- even though Arab Bank's lawyers asserted that bank secrecy laws in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories made it illegal to give up the account information.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that it lacked standing to hear a sanctions dispute about terrorism financing allegations. The panel refused to address Arab Bank's claims through an interlocutory appeal or writ of mandamus, which means the jury in the case -- and the other lawsuits -- can consider the missing documents in their verdicts.