Fuld v. The Palestine Liberation Organization

Background

Miriam Fuld and the other plaintiffs are the wife and four children of Ari Yoel Fuld, an American citizen who was stabbed to death outside a mall in Gush Etzion, a settlement in the West Bank, on September 16, 2018. The plaintiffs alleged that the attacker targeted Fuld because he was Jewish and American. They did not sue the alleged attacker; instead, they sought hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), alleging that those entities encouraged, incentivized, and assisted the attack.

The plaintiffs principally sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows United States nationals injured by international terrorism to seek damages from a person who knowingly provides substantial assistance or conspires to commit an act of international terrorism. The statute allows treble damages, attorney’s fees, and costs.

Jurisdictional Issue

The PA and PLO moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim. Personal jurisdiction is a court’s authority over a particular defendant. The plaintiffs relied on the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which amended the Anti-Terrorism Act to provide that the PA, PLO, and related entities would be “deemed to have consented” to personal jurisdiction in certain terrorism cases.

The statute identified two relevant categories of conduct: payments to certain people connected to terrorists who injured or killed American nationals, and maintaining offices or conducting activities in the United States after specified dates. The plaintiffs alleged that both categories applied. For purposes of the motion, the defendants did not dispute that the alleged payments satisfied the first category, so the court did not decide whether the second category also applied.

The court explained that personal jurisdiction generally requires either general jurisdiction, specific jurisdiction tied to the dispute, or the defendant’s knowing and voluntary consent. The plaintiffs did not rely on general or specific jurisdiction, and the court held that the Second Circuit’s earlier decision in the earlier round of this dispute foreclosed those theories. The alleged attacks were not sufficiently connected to the United States, and neither the PA nor the PLO was essentially at home there.

Holding and Reasoning

The court held that the PSJVTA’s deemed-consent provision, as applied to the conduct alleged in this case, did not satisfy due process. Personal jurisdiction is protected by the Due Process Clause, and consent is valid when the defendant’s conduct reasonably shows knowing and voluntary acceptance of the court’s authority. In the court’s view, the alleged payments had no direct connection to the United States or to litigation in a United States court. The alleged United States offices and activities also were too limited, as alleged, to show meaningful consent.

The court relied substantially on the Supreme Court’s decision in College Savings Bank, which distinguished actual voluntary consent from a legislature’s declaration that conduct would count as consent. The court also discussed decisions concerning business-registration statutes and explained that legislative notice and an opportunity to change conduct do not alone establish voluntary consent to jurisdiction.

The court rejected the argument by the plaintiffs and the United States that fair warning about the statute and an opportunity to stop the specified conduct were enough. Accepting that theory, the court reasoned, would allow Congress or a state legislature to create personal jurisdiction over any defendant based on any later conduct, regardless of the defendant’s contacts with the forum. The court emphasized that foreign-affairs and national-security concerns did not eliminate constitutional limits on personal jurisdiction.

The court did not decide whether every form of statutory deemed consent would be unconstitutional. It held only that the PSJVTA provisions and predicate conduct at issue here were too far removed from actual consent to support personal jurisdiction.

Disposition

Judge Jesse M. Furman granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The court did not reach the defendants’ other arguments for dismissal, directed the Clerk to close the case, and ordered judgment for the defendants.