US Supreme Court Rules for Pharmaceutical Companies in Terrorism-Funding Case

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 ruled in favor of AstraZeneca and other pharmaceutical companies that were sued over allegedly funding terrorism. The nation’s top court granted the companies’ bid to throw out a lower court ruling that found plaintiffs who sued the companies supported “an inference that defendants aided and abetted acts of international terrorism.” The lawsuit, filed in 2017, sought damages under the Anti-Terrorism Act. It was brought by U.S. troops and civilians injured in Iraq between 2005 and 2009, and family members of troops and civilians killed in the Middle Eastern country during that period of time. Twenty-one companies, including AstraZeneca and subsidiaries of Pfizer, corruptly funded terrorist operations led by an army known as Jaysh al-Mahdi, which controlled Iraq’s Ministry of Health starting in 2004, according to the suit. The funding mechanisms included the firms paying a 20 percent religious tax to score contracts from the ministry, plaintiffs said....