Pharmaceutical companies urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to heed the federal government’s suggestion to throw out a D.C. Circuit ruling holding them potentially liable for allegedly financing terror attacks against U.S. servicemembers through contracts with the Iraqi government.
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Pfizer Inc., and several other pharmaceutical giants said that a brief the justices invited the government to file “easily” satisfied the standard required for the high court to simultaneously grant the companies’ petition for review of the D.C. Circuit ruling, vacate the ruling, and order a remand.
The companies pointed the justices to the government’s contention that the Supreme Court’s May 2023 opinion in Twitter v. Taamneh changed or clarified relevant legal principles that could alter the lower appellate court’s decision. They argued that a “grant-vacate-remand,” or GVR, was thus appropriate to look into whether they “consciously, voluntarily, and culpably participated” in specific acts of international terrorism, which they said the D.C. Circuit never considered.
