Supreme Court Backs Pharmaceutical Giants in Iraq Terrorism Funding Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has supported 21 pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, led by AstraZeneca Plc AZN, in a lawsuit accusing them of funding terrorism that harmed American troops and civilians in Iraq.

The justices dismissed a lower court’s ruling that had allowed the case to proceed, directing the court to reconsider the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs allege that major U.S. and European pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, including Pfizer Inc PFE, GE Healthcare USA, a unit of GE Healthcare Technologies Inc GEHC, Johnson & Johnson JNJ, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche RHHBY, provided corrupt payments to the Hezbollah-sponsored militia group Jaysh al-Mahdi.

These payments were allegedly made to secure medical supply contracts from Iraq’s health ministry, which the plaintiffs claim was controlled by the militia group.

Initiated in 2017 in federal court in Washington, Reuters notes that the lawsuit seeks unspecified damages under the Anti-Terrorism Act, allowing Americans to pursue claims related to acts of international terrorism.

In 2020, a federal trial judge dismissed the lawsuit, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revived the case in 2022, the report added.

Reuters noted that in a joint statement on Monday, pharmaceutical and device companies expressed approval of the Supreme Court’s ruling and called for the lawsuit’s dismissal based on a previous Supreme Court decision involving Twitter, now known as X.

The companies argued that the ruling, which protected Twitter from liability under the Anti-Terrorism Act, should also apply to their case.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Twitter case established that aiding and abetting claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act requires proof that a defendant “consciously and culpably” participated in a terror act to aid its success.

The plaintiffs in the current case argued that the pharmaceutical and device companies’ knowing bribes to terrorists were more culpable than Twitter’s alleged failure to exclude a terrorist group from its platform.

The case now returns to the lower court for reconsideration, as per the Supreme Court’s instructions.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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