“That intervening decision clarified the standard for aiding-and-abetting liability under the ATA in ways that may bear on the court of appeals’ analysis,” it said.
In their Tuesday brief, the pharmaceutical companies said that if the high court chooses not to grant a GVR, then a plenary review of the lower court’s ruling was still appropriate and “urgently needed” because it created two circuit splits that “carry serious foreign-policy consequences.”
The companies said that the D.C. Circuit particularly split with four other circuits when it comes to the issue of direct liability by holding that indirect support to attackers can satisfy the ATA’s proximate-causation requirement.
They said the D.C. Circuit also split with three other circuits on aiding-and-abetting liability by holding that a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization’s generalized support and encouragement to a non-designated group means the designated organization plans or authorizes every attack carried out by the non-designated group.
