Supreme Court Rejects Chance to Review if Lebanese Bank Immune From Suit for Supporting Hezbollah

The Supreme Court on April 29 turned down the chance to review a lawsuit on whether defunct Lebanese bank Jammal Trust Bank is immune from being sued for supporting Hezbollah as an "instrumentality of a foreign state" under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The question posed by the writ of certiorari was whether a defendant's status as an "instrumentality of a foreign state" kicks in at the time of the filing of the complaint against the company, as the high court held in Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, or at any time after the suit is filed, as found by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Jammal Trust Bank claimed it became an instrumentality of Lebanon after it was sued when it "entered state-supervised liquidation" (Bartlett v. Baasiri, Sup. Ct. # 23-568).