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Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 8, 2005 Decided September 30, 2005

No. 04-7037

ROBERT LEE BEECHAM, PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE

ESTATE OF KENNETH FORD, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

v.

SOCIALIST PEOPLE’S LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(01cv02243)

Arman Dabiri argued the cause and filed the briefs for

appellants Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, et al.

Steven R. Perles argued the cause for appellees. With him

on the brief were Thomas Fortune Fay, Jacob A. Stein, and

Robert L. Bredhoff.

Stuart H. Newberger, Clifton S. Elgarten, and Michael L.

Martinez were on the brief for amici curiae Blake Kilburn, et al.

in support of appellees.

USCA Case #04-7037 Document #922212 Filed: 09/30/2005 Page 1 of 7
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Before: SENTELLE, RANDOLPH, and ROGERS, Circuit

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: The Socialist People’s Libyan

Arab Jamahiriya and other defendants -- collectively Libya --

appeal the district court’s order requiring the parties to confer

and propose a jurisdictional discovery plan. Our inquiry begins

-- and ends -- with an examination of our jurisdiction to hear this

appeal. 

Plaintiffs are victims and estate representatives of victims

injured or killed in the 1986 bombing of the “La Belle”

discotheque in West Berlin, Germany. Their complaint alleges

as follows. Defendant Colonel Muammar Al-Ghaddafi, head of

the Libyan government, directed Libyan agents to plan, prepare,

and execute the attack. Libyan agent Souad Chraidi transported

plastic explosives, a detonator, and a timing device from the

Libyan embassy in East Berlin to an apartment in West Berlin.

Chraidi and others made the final preparations for the attack,

fitting the detonator and timer to the explosives, which they

concealed in a bag for delivery to the discotheque. On the night

of the bombing, Verena Chanaa and Andrea Häusler brought the

bomb to the discotheque, where they activated the timing

device, placed the bomb at a seat in the center of the dance floor,

and left. In the early morning hours of April 5, 1986, the bomb

exploded with approximately 260 people inside the discotheque.

Three people were killed and more than two hundred injured.

Among other things, plaintiffs point to telex

communications between Libyan intelligence in Tripoli and the

Libyan embassy in East Berlin confirming defendants’

responsibility for the attack. Colonel Al-Ghaddafi purportedly

admitted as much to a German ambassador in a meeting in 2001.

USCA Case #04-7037 Document #922212 Filed: 09/30/2005 Page 2 of 7
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Plaintiffs invoked the district court’s subject matter

jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of

1976, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1330, 1602-1611. Section 1605(a)(7) of the

Act carves out an exception to the provision giving foreign

states immunity from suits in federal and state courts. See 28

U.S.C. § 1604. Under certain circumstances, a foreign state has

no immunity in a suit seeking damages “for personal injury or

death that was caused by an act of torture, extrajudicial killing

. . . or the provision of material support or resources . . . for such

an act” if officials, employees or agents of the foreign state

engaged in these actions while acting within the scope of their

office or employment. 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(7). Libya

interposed a sovereign immunity defense and moved to dismiss

the complaint. According to the motion, plaintiffs had not

sufficiently alleged, under § 1605(a)(7), that Libya “caused” the

harm plaintiffs suffered from the bombing. In Phoenix

Consulting, Inc. v. Republic of Angola, 216 F.3d 36, 39-40 (D.C.

Cir. 2000), we viewed as jurisdictional the requirement that

plaintiffs bring their case within one of the exceptions in

§ 1605(a) when the foreign state has claimed sovereign

immunity. In response to Libya’s motion in this case, plaintiffs

moved for “jurisdictional discovery,” which Libya opposed.

The district court considered the allegations of the

complaint to be legally sufficient because, if true, the causal

chain implicating Libya and the individual defendants was “pled

sufficiently clearly and specifically to counter defendants’ legal

challenge.” As to the complaint’s factual sufficiency, Phoenix

Consulting forbade the court from treating the complaint’s

allegations as true, and required it to “go beyond the pleadings

and resolve any disputed issues of fact the resolution of which

is necessary to a ruling upon the motion to dismiss.” 216 F.3d

at 40. Libya argued that plaintiffs had not “presented a scintilla

of evidence to support the allegations of the complaint,” which

the district court took as a denial of plaintiffs’ allegations

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“sufficient to merit initial targeted discovery” to resolve subject

matter jurisdiction.

To that end, the court ordered the parties to “confer” and

submit “a joint report proposing a plan for conducting discovery

limited to facts bearing upon the court’s subject matter

jurisdiction.” The court stayed its order while the parties

pursued settlement talks. When the talks proved fruitless, the

court reinstated the order. Libya invokes this court’s appellate

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

In cases arising under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities

Act, we have recognized our jurisdiction to review a district

court’s order denying a foreign state’s motion to dismiss on the

ground of sovereign immunity. The theory is that under the

collateral order doctrine, see Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan

Corp., 337 U.S. 541 (1949), such orders finally determine the

foreign state’s right to be immune from burdens of a lawsuit

altogether. See, e.g., Jungquist v. Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa al

Nahyan, 115 F.3d 1020, 1025-26 (D.C. Cir. 1997). We have

also exercised mandamus jurisdiction to consider the scope of a

district court’s jurisdictional discovery order. In re Minister

Papandreou, 139 F.3d 247, 251-52 (D.C. Cir. 1998). Here the

theory is, in part, that “the demands of international comity”

counsel against requiring foreign officials to subject themselves

to contempt and only then appeal the contempt citation. Id. We

also said that a jurisdictional discovery order might impose

litigation burdens on a foreign state somewhat similar to those

the sovereign immunity defense protects against. Id. at 251.

Libya now seeks to add a third category: orders comparable to

those under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(f) requiring the

parties to confer and submit a joint jurisdictional discovery plan

as a prelude to actual discovery. But Libya points to no case in

which a court has exercised appellate jurisdiction over such

orders, and we see no basis for expanding our appellate

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jurisdiction to cover them. See McKesson Corp. v. Islamic

Republic of Iran, 52 F.3d 346, 353 (D.C. Cir. 1995).

While a limited class of interlocutory orders may be

considered “final decisions” of the district courts under 28

U.S.C. § 1291, and thus immediately appealable, orders to

participate in the sort of discovery conference contemplated here

are not among them. Such orders do not by any stretch resolve

important issues in the case and they do not “conclusively

determine” the scope of jurisdictional discovery. Coopers &

Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468 (1978).

Papandreou, on which Libya mainly relies, does not

support our jurisdiction. For one thing, Libya has brought an

appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291; Papandreou was before us on a

petition for a writ of mandamus. The rules governing these

modes of review are different. See In re Minister Papandreou,

139 F.3d at 250; FED. R. APP. P. 21.

For another thing, the burdens of discovery on the foreign

state, which also played a role in Papandreou, are absent here.

The district court has ordered a conference like the ones

contemplated in Rule 26(f); it has not ordered discovery of any

scope. As in Rule 26(f) conferences, the burden of conferring

and formulating a discovery plan in this case falls on the lawyers

for the opposing sides. Both sides recognized as much in their

Joint Report of Counsel on Discovery Plan, which they

submitted to the district court. (The parties’ counsel already

have met and conferred for settlement purposes.)

Libya argues that, as a foreign state, it cannot be required to

violate the district court’s order and be held in contempt for this

court to have jurisdiction. Appellants’ Br. at 8; compare In re

Minister Papandreou, 139 F.3d at 251-52. But whether the

district court would hold Libya in contempt for violating the

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order is not at all clear. District courts can impose any number

of sanctions besides contempt when a party fails to comply with

a discovery order. See, e.g., FED. R. CIV. P. 37(b). Our

jurisdiction cannot rest on the possibility of contempt. The law

of this circuit now is that “a civil contempt order against a party

in a pending proceeding is not appealable as a final order under

28 U.S.C. § 1291.” Byrd v. Reno, 180 F.3d 298, 302 (D.C. Cir.

1999). Byrd explicitly rejected Papandreou’s suggestion to the

contrary. Id. at 300-01.

There are additional reasons why appellate jurisdiction is

wanting. This litigation currently is several steps removed from

Papandreou. The district court there had issued a jurisdictional

discovery order. Here, there has yet to be a conference of

counsel to work out a discovery plan. It is possible the parties

will agree about the proper scope of discovery. If so, they

would then submit the plan to the court, which may or may not

approve it. It is also possible that Libya will convince plaintiffs

or the district court, as strenuously argued to this court, that

Libya simply cannot “under any possible scenario or

circumstances” provide relevant information. Appellants’ Br. at

16. If the parties in good faith are unable to work out a

discovery plan, the district court would have to make its

decision in the exercise of its discretion. See 6 JAMES WM.

MOORE ET AL., MOORE’S FEDERAL PRACTICE ¶ 26.146 (3d ed.

2005). Only if the court orders jurisdictional discovery and

clearly abuses its discretion in determining the scope of

discovery could mandamus possibly lie. In re Minister

Papandreou, 139 F.3d at 252. 

Libya frames its appeal as if we had before us the question

whether jurisdictional discovery is appropriate at all. This

recasting of the issue changes nothing. It is still unknown

whether the parties will resolve the issues in the course of

crafting a discovery plan or whether the district court will

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actually order specific discovery to take place. This court

cannot have jurisdiction before actual discovery is ordered. Any

decision now would be premature. The issue Libya poses may

never arise or it may arise in a context that bears on its

resolution. These are the hallmarks of an interlocutory order

over which the courts of appeals do not have jurisdiction. See

United States v. Cisneros, 169 F.3d 763 (D.C. Cir. 1999).

Appeal dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

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