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About the Case

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The Hill Case

The complaint in the Hill case was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on December 15, 1999, on behalf of ten American citizens who had been held hostage by Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The complaint and an amended complaint were properly served upon Iraq through diplomatic channels and Iraq failed to respond. Following the filing of the complaint, the Court granted a series of motions authorizing additional hostages and their spouses to be joined as plaintiffs in the case. As a result, the case involved claims brought by a total of 180 hostages and their spouses.

Judge Thomas P. Jackson held an evidentiary hearing in the Hill case that took place from October 9-12, 2001, at which he heard testimony from ten plaintiffs who were held hostage at various locations in Iraq and Kuwait. On December 5, 2001, Judge Jackson issued a decision, finding that Iraq was liable to all of the plaintiffs for hostage-taking and false imprisonment, under both U.S. and international law. In addition, Judge Jackson entered default judgments against Iraq and Saddam on behalf of each of the plaintiffs who testified at the hearing, awarding compensatory damages in amounts, ranging from a low of $136,000 to a high of $1,749,000. Furthermore, Judge Jackson awarded punitive damages against Saddam in the amount of $300 million (the statute does not permit punitive damages awards against terrorist states themselves), to be divided among all 180 plaintiffs.

Judge Jackson ordered that the claims of all those plaintiffs who did not testify at the evidentiary hearing be presented through written submission. By March 11, 2002, all claims had been filed with the Court. Judge Jackson entered final judgments on behalf of all of these plaintiffs in August and September 2002, awarding each of them compensatory damages in amounts ranging from $40,000 to $1,280,000. The total amount of compensatory damages awarded to all plaintiffs was approximately $94 million.

In September 2002, the Hill plaintiffs brought an enforcement proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking to compel The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and two private New York banks to release frozen Iraqi funds in satisfaction of their judgments. Subsequently, on November 26, 2002, Congress enacted the Terrorism Risk Protection Act, which amended the law to give American victims of state sponsored terrorism the right to collect their judgments from the frozen assets of terrorist states. Invoking that law, Judge John Sprizzo ordered The Federal Reserve Bank of New York to turn over approximately $47 million in frozen Iraqi funds to the Hill plaintiffs on March 7, 2003. Approximately, two weeks later, President Bush issued an order compelling the Bank of New York to release blocked Iraqi funds from its accounts sufficient to satisfy the outstanding balance of the Hill plaintiffs’ compensatory damage awards.

In his December 5, 2001 decision, Judge Jackson refused to award any damages for lost income to certain of the Hill plaintiffs on the ground that such damages were too speculative. The Hill plaintiffs appealed that part of Judge Jackson's decision and, on May 16, 2003, the Court of Appeal ruled that Jackson has applied the wrong standard in articulating the Hill plaintiffs lost income claims and reversed his decision denying those claims.

Following the Court of Appeal’s decision, on February 12, 2004, Judge Jackson issued an order requiring the Hill plaintiffs to show cause why their lost income claims should not be dismissed in light of a subsequent Court of Appeal’s decision in another case, which held that the federal statute upon which the plaintiffs in that case had based their claims against Iran did not support their claims of hostage-taking and torture. In response to that show cause order, the Hill plaintiffs filed a brief in which they explained why their claims were viable despite that decision. Subsequently, Judge Jackson issued an order affirming that the Hill plaintiffs’ claims remained legally valid and, by March 30, 2004, he had issued a lost income award in favor of each Hill plaintiff who had sought one. To this day, however, those plaintiffs have been unable to collect their lost income awards owing to the Bush administration’s decision to transfer all remaining Iraqi assets in this country to the rebuilding effort.

The Vine Case

The complaint in the Vine case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on December 27, 2001. A first amended complaint was filed on March 7, 2002 and served on Iraq in November 2002. Though the Vine case was initially assigned to Judge Jackson, it was transferred to Judge Henry H. Kennedy in March 2003.

As in the Hill case, Iraq initially failed to appear and, as a result, Judge Kennedy entered an order of default against Iraq in July 2003. A month later, the U.S. Government filed a statement of interest in the Vine case in which it argued that the court no longer had jurisdiction over the case as a result of a provision in the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2003 (the “EWSAA”), which made certain provisions of law relating to terrorist states inapplicable to Iraq. In response, the Vine plaintiffs argued that the EWSAA was only intended to lift existing sanctions on Iraq and that it was never intended to deprive American citizens of their right to seek legal redress against Iraq in American courts for acts of hostage-taking and torture. In July 2004, Judge Kennedy issued an order affirming that the EWSAA did not restrict the jurisdiction of the courts to hear claims against Iraq. In the same order, Judge Kennedy instructed the Vine plaintiffs to amend their complaint to clarify the legal theories upon which they were basing their claims.

In accordance with that instruction, the Vine plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint on August 13, 2004. Four months later, on January 19, 2005, counsel for Iraq entered an appearance in the Vine case, whereupon Judge Jackson vacated the default that he had issued against Iraq eighteen months before. Subsequently, in late February, Iraq filed a motion to dismiss the Vine case on various legal grounds. After plaintiffs filed their brief opposing that motion in March, counsel for Iraq asked the court to stay the proceedings pending their receipt of instructions from the new Iraqi government. The court granted that motion and, as a result, all proceedings in the Vine case have been temporarily suspended.

In the meantime, the Vine case remains open to additional plaintiffs who may wish to participate. Accordingly, please contact us at dan@danielwolflaw.com if you have any interest in joining the suit or require any additional information relating to this matter.