US Laws Concerning the Cyprus Class Action Lawsuit
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA)is a United States law enacted in 1976. The Act enables Foreign States, their political subdivisions, agencies, or instrumentalities to be sued in federal or state courts in the United States. The FSIA defines the conditions necessary to bring legal action against a foreign state in the U.S. and constitute an exception to the |
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immunity of sovereign foreign states. The most common exceptions to Foreign Sovereign Immunity are when the foreign state waives immunity and/or submit the dispute to arbitration, engages in a commercial activity, commits a tort in the U.S. or expropriates property in violation of international law, as has been the case in Cyprus. The FSIA is applicable retroactively, which is to say that legal action is admissible into court that deals with issues that date prior to the enactment of the FSIA in 1976. Commercial Activity Exception to FSIA is of crucial importance with respect to Cyprus and all the property that has been expropriated illegally on the Northern parts of the island following the Turkish invasion in 1974 that was made possible by the purchase and use of military equipment from the U.S. that amounts to "commercial activity" used in the invasion that displaced 200,000 Cypriots from their homes, town, churches and killed thousands and another 1500 persons are unaccounted for and still missing.
The most important exception to sovereign immunity is the commercial activity exception, 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2). That section provides three bases on which a plaintiff can sue a foreign state:
- When the plaintiff's claim is based upon a commercial activity carried on in the U.S. by the foreign state.
- When the plaintiff's claim is based upon an act by the foreign state which is performed in the U.S. in connection with commercial activity outside the U.S.
- When the plaintiff's claim is based upon an act by the foreign state which is performed outside the U.S. in connection with commercial activity outside the U.S. and which causes a direct effect in the U.S.
When the plaintiff’s claim bases itself upon commercial activity in the U.S. by the foreign state regarding acts occurring outside the U.S., id est Cyprus, the commercial activity exception to the FSIA applies and the foreign state can be sued in the U.S. as a result. The legal precedent for this commercial activity exception from the FSIA is largely due to the landmark case of Kirkham v. Air France. A ticket that Mrs. Kirkham purchased in the U.S. to fly to France gave rise to a duty of care and the following severe personal injuries in France when in transit between connecting flights to her final destination provided Mr. Tsimpedes as her attorney with the necessary nexus to invoke commercial activity exception to the FSIA and enabled him to prosecute Air France and thereby the State of France (majority shareholder of Air France) in the United States District Court in Washington, DC.
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