September 2, 2005 – District Court Decision (Largely) Denying Arab Bank’s Motion to Dismiss the Complaint
The factual allegations of the complaints sufficiently support an inference that Arab Bank and the terrorist organizations were participants in a common plan under which Arab Bank would supply necessary financial services to the organizations which would themselves perform the violent acts. Administering the death and dismemberment benefit plan further supports not only the existence of an agreement but Arab Bank’s knowing and intentional participation in the agreement’s illegal goals. No more is required.
November 25, 2006 – District Court Decision (Magistrate Pohorelsky) Overruling Arab Bank’s Bank Secrecy Objections
Proof concerning the flow of money, if any, from those allegedly funding the payments through the bank to the families of known participants in the attacks is essential to the plaintiffs’ case. Furthermore, because the defendant denies knowing involvement in any such compensation scheme, proof concerning the arrangements for making such payments and the breadth of the payment scheme is also crucial.
In any event, as the Palestinian Monetary Authority operates in an area governed at least in part by other authorities that have themselves engaged in terrorist activity, it would be absurd for this court to exalt the bank secrecy interests of those under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Monetary Authority over the anti-terrorism interests of the United States and other recognized states in the region.
June 1, 2009 – Magistrate Pohorelsky Report and Recommendation Regarding Sanctions to Impose on Arab Bank for Its Failure to Provide Court Ordered Discovery
As explained in more detail in the discussion below regarding their content, the withheld bank records bear directly on a central element of the plaintiffs’ proof here – whether the defendant provided financial services to terrorists. Without that evidence the plaintiffs face a difficult, and perhaps insurmountable, hurdle in establishing their case.
July 12, 2010 – District Court Decision Imposing Sanctions on Arab Bank for Its Failure to Provide Court Ordered Discovery
In this case, where defendant has intentionally failed to meet its production obligations, where plaintiffs have made specific requests and shown that the withheld evidence is not only relevant but also essential to proof of their claims, where plaintiffs have no alternative means of securing the information they seek from defendant, and where defendant has articulated no reason for its recalcitrance other than the bank secrecy grounds already rejected, significant sanctions are both “just” and “commensurate” with defendant's non-compliance.
December 6, 2011 – District Court Decision Excluding Certain of Arab Bank’s Proposed Expert Witnesses
[T]he opinions of individuals, organizations, governments, or government officials, as either expressed by or reported by defendant's experts, regarding Arab Bank (or Jordan, or other countries in the Middle East); Arab Bank's role in Middle East banking; or even whether or not Arab Bank supported terrorism, are not relevant.
January 18, 2013 – Second Circuit Panel Decision Denying Arab Bank’s Writ of Mandamus Regarding the District Court’s July 12, 2010 Sanctions Decision
Proof concerning the flow of money, if any, from those allegedly funding the payments through the bank to the families of known participants in the attacks is essential to the plaintiffs’ case. Furthermore, because the defendant denies knowing involvement in any such compensation scheme, proof concerning the arrangements for making such payments and the breadth of the payment scheme is also crucial.
In any event, as the Palestinian Monetary Authority operates in an area governed at least in part by other authorities that have themselves engaged in terrorist activity, it would be absurd for this court to exalt the bank secrecy interests of those under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Monetary Authority over the anti-terrorism interests of the United States and other recognized states in the region.
May 14, 2013 – District Court Decision Denying Arab Bank’s Motion to Submit Evidence of Foreign Law
In so arguing, the Bank, while purporting to accept that the ATA is the law applicable to this case, suggests that it can argue to the jury that the jury should simply ignore the ATA in favor of the foreign laws the Bank chose to follow. Such an argument is an invitation to nullification. And whether foreign law permitted the Bank to provide financial services to terrorists–or even required the Bank to return money to a known terrorist, as the Bank asserts was the case with Hamdan–offers no basis for the supposed inference that the Bank had an innocent mental state regarding compliance with United States law.
August 22, 2013 – District Court Decision Regarding Certain of the Parties’ Motions in Limine
Again, the issue in this trial is what the defendant knew. Testimony concerning the knowledge of the Israeli or United States governments or the commitment of the Jordanian or Saudi governments to fighting terrorism is, at best, tangentially relevant to this issue, and permitting these witnesses to testify runs the risk that ‘the sideshow will swallow up the circus.’
September 22, 2014 – Jury unanimously finds Arab Bank liable for knowingly providing material support to Hamas and proximately causing the 24 attacks at issue in the trial.
April 8, 2015 – District Court Decision Largely Affirming Jury Verdict
[T]he verdict was based on volumes of damning circumstantial evidence that defendant knew its customers were terrorists.
Finally, any prejudice to defendant from the permissive inference instruction in the Sanctions Order was also greatly overshadowed by the testimony of defendant’s expert, Dr. Milton-Edwards, which backfired in spectacular fashion. I have to assume that the jury was as surprised as I was when, after testifying on direct examination that she had visited almost all of the Palestinian charities for a prolonged period and had never seen any pro-Hamas literature, and therefore had concluded that they were not in league with Hamas, it came out on cross-examination that she could not read Arabic.
And the way it came out on cross-examination made it seem like she, and defendant as the party who had proffered her, had attempted to conceal the lack of basis for her opinion on direct testimony by not drawing the teeth on this point – such as when plaintiffs showed her a photograph bearing the words “Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas” (taken from her own promotional video). By that point in the trial, I had seen the word “Hamas” in Arabic so many times that I immediately recognized it, and I suspect some of the jury may have as well. Yet the expert had to be prompted before she recognized it, and it only then came out that she could not read Arabic.
This was the most dramatic, but not the only, incident of friendly fire directed at the Bank by Dr. Milton-Edwards. As noted above, her testimony that the charities at issue were not Hamas affiliates was directly contradicted by what she had written in her book about Hamas. Her response to being confronted with that was flippant. She was similarly flippant when her knowledge of Hamas was tested by asking her to identify a picture of Salah Shehadah, the founder of the al-Qassam Brigades. She said she was unable to identify him because of the “whole big beard phenomenon,” suggesting that all terrorists look alike to her.
When a party calls an expert witness, it essentially vouches for her expertise. The jury knows that these witnesses are prepared by the lawyers and it evaluates a party’s case in conjunction with evaluating the expert’s testimony. A reasonable disagreement with a point that an expert expresses does not necessarily doom the proponent’s case. But when an expert is profoundly careless, there is a risk that the jury will attribute that carelessness to the proponent, not just the expert.
