Supreme Court to Consider Reviving $4 Billion Terror Award Against Sudan

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider reviving a $4.3 billion punitive damage award against Sudan for providing al-Qaeda with a haven while the terrorist group planned the 1998 bombings outside the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The award came in a lawsuit on behalf of more than 150 U.S. government employees and contractors who were killed or injured, as well as hundreds of family members. The punitive damages are part of a $10.2 billion award they won when Sudan didn’t defend against a lawsuit filed in Washington.

A federal appeals court said a U.S. sovereign-immunity law doesn’t permit punitive damages for actions that took place before Congress amended the law in 2008 to authorize those types of awards.

President Donald Trump‘s administration joined the victims and family members in asking the Supreme Court to overturn that part of the ruling. The appellate panel upheld the rest of the award.

Sudan didn’t start defending itself in the case until after a federal trial judge had issued a default judgment against the African nation. The Supreme Court took no action on Sudan’s separate appeal, which sought to overturn the entire award.

The high court will hear arguments in the nine-month term that starts in October, making that the second straight term with a Sudan terrorism case. In March the court tossed out a $315 million judgment to victims of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, saying Sudan hadn’t been properly notified of the lawsuit.

The new case is Opati v. Sudan, 17-1268.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo

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