Robert Bartlett, et al. v. Muhammad Baasiri, et al.

In Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, this Court held that a party’s status as an instrumentality of a foreign state under 28 U.S.C. § 1603(b)(2) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act “is determined at the time of the filing of the complaint.” 538 U.S. 468, 480 (2003). It made clear that this means that changes in instrumentality status occurring after filing do not change the legal basis for claims against such an entity, under “the ‘longstanding principle that “the jurisdiction of the Court depends upon the state of things at the time of the action brought.”’” Id. at 478 (quoting Keene Corp. v. United States, 508 U.S. 200, 207 (1993)). Here, Respondent Jammal Trust Bank was a private Lebanese financial institution when Petitioners sued it for supporting Hezbollah, but it claimed it became an instrumentality of Lebanon when it later entered state-supervised liquidation (a result of its designation as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the U.S. Treasury Department). The Second Circuit, however, held that instrumentality status could be determined “after a suit is filed” notwithstanding Dole Food, because Supreme Court “opinions are not statutes.” Pet. App. 22a, 33a. It also concluded that other circuits’ decisions confirming that Dole Food applied to post-filing changes in instrumentality status were wrongly decided, id. at 27-28a, 29a n.3, 35a-36a, creating a sharp circuit split. The question presented is: Whether a defendant’s status as an instrumentality of a foreign state under 28 U.S.C. § 1603(b)(2) “is determined at the time of the filing of the complaint,” as this Court held in Dole Food, or at any time “after a suit is filed,” as the Second Circuit held below.