The U.S. Supreme Court accepted on Monday an appeal from 21 pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, including AstraZeneca and Pfizer, in a lawsuit alleging their assistance in financing terrorist activities that resulted in the deaths or injuries of hundreds of American military personnel and civilians in Iraq. The Supreme Court justices rejected a decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case brought by military personnel and civilians who claimed to have been harmed between 2005 and 2011 during the Iraq War. The justices asked the D.C. Circuit Court to reconsider the case.
Hundreds of U.S. military personnel, civilians, and their families have filed lawsuits against companies affiliated with five entities: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, GE Health Care, Johnson & Johnson, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche. The plaintiffs accused major American and European pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers of providing funds to the Mahdi Army, an armed group supported by Hezbollah, in order to secure medical supply contracts from the Iraqi Ministry of Health. The plaintiffs alleged that the Mahdi Army controlled decisions made by the Ministry of Health.
The lawsuit, filed in 2017 in a federal court in Washington, seeks unspecified damages under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Federal court judges dismissed the lawsuit in 2020, before the D.C. Circuit Court overturned that decision in 2022, allowing the case to proceed.
