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Neil McDougall v. Saudi Arabian Oil Company, dba Saudi Aramco

Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, No. 25-10619 · judgment April 2, 2026


2%
estimated cert probability
(petition-stage, structural)
GVR risk 0%

Well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.

Questions presented

  1. Whether a plaintiff who sues an undisputed foreign-state defendant under the FSIA must plead that a domestic subsidiary through which the defendant allegedly acted also qualifies as a foreign state before a court may consider the statutory exceptions in 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2) and § 1605(a)(3)?

  2. Whether the courts below properly dismissed McDougall’s FSIA expropriation theory at the pleading stage after treating employment documents, rather than McDougall’s pleaded legal claims for earned benefits, as the property allegedly taken?

Counsel of record

For petitioner
Warren V. Norred
Norred Law, PLLC

For respondent
Carolyn Beth Lamm
White & Case LLP

Case

Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference

Proceedings

  1. Aug 26 2026
    DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/28/2026.
  2. Aug 18 2026
    Waiver of right of respondent Saudi Arabian Oil Company to respond filed.
  3. Jul 01 2026
    Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due August 24, 2026)