Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC

Joseph Jesner and other plaintiffs, injured or bereaved by overseas terrorist attacks, sued Arab Bank (defendant), a multinational Jordanian bank, claiming its New York branch cleared U.S.-dollar transactions that allegedly benefited terrorist groups, violating the law of nations under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The trial court dismissed on the ground that the ATS reaches only individuals, not corporations, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split roughly 13 years into the litigation, during which the suit had strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Jordan.