Osen LLC in the News
MANHATTAN (CN) – Overturning a verdict that blamed Arab Bank for 24 Hamas attacks in Israel, the Second Circuit on Friday effectively reduced a confidential settlement won by survivors and relatives of those attacks.
After 14 years of litigation involving hundreds of victims, Gary Osen, an attorney for one of families, emphasized that the ruling still provides “meaningful and very substantial compensation for their injuries.”
“We would have liked a sweeping victory, but we’re still very satisfied with the result,” Osen said in a statement.
A Florida judge has denied a motion from the fruit company for summary judgment, meaning that in the absence of a settlement or successful legal challenges Chiquita Brands could be the first U.S. corporation to go to trial under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). A court date has been set for Feb. 5.
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“For the families who filed this case 10 years ago, it is gratifying to finally have their day in court,” said Gary M. Osen, managing partner of Osen LLC, the law firm that argued the motion on behalf of the plaintiffs before the district court.
“We’re confident that the evidence will show that Chiquita made a calculated business decision to pay people they knew were terrorists,” Osen said.
The 200 people involved have filed the lawsuit under the US Anti-Terrorism Act. They want a jury trial and unspecified damages from the six banks, who are Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Standard Chartered and the Royal Bank of Scotland. “They were indifferent to the criminal purposes a state sponsor of terrorism puts their money to," claimed Gary Osen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, to the Wall Street Journal.
EAST ST. LOUIS – Lawyers who for 12 years have pursued claims that banks helped Iran sponsor terror attacks have earned the high compliment of imitation.
John Driscoll of St. Louis copied their theory and many of their facts in a suit he filed against eight banks at U.S. district court in November.
Driscoll represents estates and families of 18 persons who died in Iraq, as well as veterans who survived attacks with injuries.
He seeks damages under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act against Deutsche Bank, HSBC Bank, Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse, Bank Saderat and Commerzbank.
A federal judge has allowed terrorism victims to proceed with their civil actions against two banks.
On Thursday, Eastern District Judge Dora Irizarry rejected the dismissal motions filed by Crédit Lyonnais and National Westminster Bank in their respective cases.
Plaintiffs said the banks maintained accounts for charities the Department of Treasury in 2005 called "Specially Designated Global Terrorists."
Crédit Lyonnais, headquartered in France, and National Westminster Bank, headquartered in the United Kingdom, have raised defenses including a lack of personal jurisdiction in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 ruling, Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S.Ct. 746.
In Strauss vs Crédit Lyonnais, 06-cv-702, and Weiss v. National Westminster Bank, 05-cv-4622, Irizarry said she had jurisdiction over the banks through New York's long-arm statute, CPLR §302(a)(1), as well as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(1)(C).
Both banks alternately moved for summary judgment, saying plaintiffs failed to show that as of the date of the last transfer, both several years before 2005, the banks acted with the requisite knowledge and proximately caused the injuries. Irizarry rejected the bids.
According to Gary Osen of Osen LLC, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in the two cases, all plaintiffs were also in a lawsuit against Arab Bank, though the plaintiff set was larger in that case.
Osen was a member of the Arab Bank plaintiff legal team. On the eve of a 2015 damages trial, Arab Bank and the plaintiffs said they were settling.
Lawrence Friedman and Jonathan Blackman, partners at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, represented Crédit Lyonnais and National Westminster Bank.
A lawsuit by families of U.S. citizens murdered by Mexican drug cartels brought against global bank HSBC under provisions of a powerful anti-terror law could have legs, even though the gangs themselves are not currently designated as terrorist groups, say legal experts.
The civil action, released earlier this month, argues that HSBC Holdings Plc should be held responsible under the US Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) for a series of deaths at the hands of brutal Mexican drug gangs because the institution admitted to laundering more than $880 million on behalf of the cartels as part of a $1.9 billion settlement in 2012 tied to broad anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions failings. To read a copy of the plaintiff’s complaint, please click here.
Islamic State and other terror organisations have been using Twitter as a communications tool for many years. Alison Frankel looks at a US case which may have repercussions for social media. If the widow of a US government contractor killed in a 2015 Islamic State shooting in Amman, Jordan, wins her newly filed US Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) suit against Twitter, there could be enormous consequences for social media sites. Extremist groups are well known to use the internet to recruit members and plan attacks. Liability to victims of these attacks — and the treble damages available under the ATA — could mean significant exposure and reputational harm for sites frequented by extremists.
Lawyers for a bank that transferred cash to the families of Hamas militants are trying to slam the brakes on a graphic display that could find its way into a Brooklyn courtroom — a Volkswagen occupied by four crash dummies representing the victims of a terror attack.
Big banks believe that lawsuits alleging that they are financing terrorism cause "de-risking," and the banks are warning that this is a bad development. What are they talking about?
De-risking is jargon for pulling out of places—perhaps the Palestinian territories or Somalia—where doing business has led to regulatory penalties and/or lawsuits. As government agencies and plaintiffs' attorneys have increasingly accused international banks of engaging in money laundering and financing terrorists, some banks have cut ties to clients in the Middle East and Africa.
Banks describe de-risking as a way to limit exposure to U.S. government fines and court liability. The banks further claim that the trend has resulted in a scarcity of banking services for poor people who depend on remittances from relatives in the West and for nongovernmental organizations devoted to humanitarian causes. Further, the banks assert that cutting off troubled regions from the international financial system will result in more—not less—crime and terrorism.
A judge has refused to upset a jury verdict that found Arab Bank civilly liable for the material support of Hamas during the Second Intifada.
"The verdict was based on volumes of damning circumstantial evidence that the defendant knew its customers were terrorists," Eastern District Judge Brian Cogan wrote in a 96-page decision released Wednesday, denying most of the bank's bid for judgment as a matter of law and rebuffing a request for a retrial.
