Anti-Terrorism Act

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Rhonda Kemper v. Deutsche Bank AG

Case No.: 18-1031

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Anti-Terrorism Act

On May 16, 2009, U.S. Army Specialist David Schaefer, Jr., was killed by a roadside bomb while serving a tour of duty in Iraq. This litigation represents his mother’s attempt to hold someone responsible for the senseless loss of her son. It is easy to understand why she wishes to do so. But not everything is redressable in a court. Terrorist attacks such as the one that took Spc. Schaefer’s life often elude the conventional judicial system. Those directly responsible may be beyond the reach of the court, because they are unidentifiable, or because they are beyond the reach of the court’s personal jurisdiction, or because they themselves have come to a violent end. Secondary actors, such as the organizations that fund the terrorists, are often amorphous and difficult to hale into court. Finally, despite Congress’s effort to make state sponsors of terrorism accountable in U.S. courts, see 28 U.S.C. § 1605A, any resulting judgment may be uncollectible. See, e.g., Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 138 S. Ct. 816 (2018).

Rhonda Kemper attempted to get around these formidable obstacles by alleging that the bomb that killed her son was a signature Iranian weapon that traveled from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (“the Guard”) to Hezbollah to Iraqi militias, who then placed it in the ground in Basra, Iraq, where it killed Spc. Schaefer. Kemper asserts that Deutsche Bank AG, a German entity with U.S. affiliates, is responsible for her son’s death under the Anti-Terrorism Act (“ATA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2333. She ties Deutsche Bank to the fatal bomb through the Bank’s alleged membership in an Iranian conspiracy to commit acts of terror. It joined that conspiracy, she contends, when it instituted procedures to evade U.S. sanctions and facilitate Iranian banking transactions.

The district court found that Kemper failed to plead facts that plausibly indicated that Deutsche Bank’s actions caused her son’s death. It thus dismissed her complaint for failure to state a claim. We affirm.

Affirmed

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Derek A. Hawkins is a trademark corporate counsel attorney for Harley-Davidson, where he concentrates his practice on brand protection and strategy.