Dole Food Company v. Patrickson
United States Supreme Court
538 U.S. 468 (2003)
Farm workers (plaintiffs) from several countries sued Dole Food Company (defendant) over pesticide injuries; Dole impleaded two subsidiary chemical companies, the Dead Sea Companies (defendants), which claimed to be instrumentalities of the State of Israel entitled to sovereign immunity and removal rights under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Israel owned shares in Dole, which in turn owned the Dead Sea Companies as its own subsidiaries, but Israel never directly owned a majority of the Dead Sea Companies' shares. The court of appeals held the Dead Sea Companies were merely a subsidiary of an instrumentality, not instrumentalities themselves.
Whether the FSIA requires a foreign state to own a majority of a corporation's shares for that corporation to be deemed an instrumentality of the state, and whether instrumentality status is determined at the time a complaint is filed.