Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-07141/USCOURTS-caDC-13-07141-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 10, 2014 Decided December 30, 2014 

No. 13-7141 

NILO JEREZ, 

APPELLANT

v. 

REPUBLIC OF CUBA, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:09-mc-00466) 

Richard J. Oparil argued the cause and filed the briefs for 

appellant. 

Michael R. Krinsky argued the cause for appellees. With 

him on the brief was David B. Goldstein. 

Before: BROWN, Circuit Judge, and WILLIAMS and 

GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

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WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Nilo Jerez filed suit in 

Florida state court against the Republic of Cuba and various 

codefendants, including Fidel Castro and the “Cuban 

Revolutionary Armed Forces,” alleging that he had suffered 

horrifying torture at their hands and continued to suffer the 

consequences. Having obtained a default judgment in state 

court, Jerez now seeks to execute that judgment on patents 

and trademarks held or managed by the appellees in this 

action, who are allegedly agents and instrumentalities of 

Cuba. Because the Florida state court lacked subject-matter 

jurisdiction to grant the default judgment, we affirm the 

district court’s denial of Jerez’s request. 

* * * 

In the 1960s and 1970s, while incarcerated in Cuba, Nilo 

Jerez allegedly endured unlawful incarceration and torture 

committed by the Cuban government and its codefendants. 

The torture allegedly included such features as having 

electricity run through his body causing loss of bodily 

functions and consciousness and being forced to live 

surrounded by his own urine and feces. Readers familiar with 

Against All Hope, Armando Valladares’s account of his 

incarceration by the same parties, will find much of Jerez’s 

treatment similar to that inflicted on Valladares and depicted 

by him as having been extended to many of his fellow 

prisoners. In Jerez’s case, he alleges, the defendants also 

purposefully injected him with the hepatitis C virus and 

subjected him to other conditions also causing hepatitis C, 

which has in turn caused him ongoing cirrhosis of the liver. 

In 2005, years after arriving in the United States, Jerez 

sued the defendants for compensatory and punitive damages 

in Florida state court (specifically the Eleventh Judicial 

Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida). After the 

defendants failed to appear, the court found them liable under 

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the Torture Victim Protection Act and granted Jerez a default 

judgment for $200 million. Although Jerez’s complaint 

alluded to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), he 

claimed jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Claim Act, and the 

court found jurisdiction on that basis. 

To enforce the default judgment, Jerez sued in the United 

States district court for the Southern District of Florida. The 

defendants again defaulted. The court granted full faith and 

credit to the Florida state court judgment and granted Jerez 

judgment for $200 million plus interest. The Florida district 

court made no mention of the basis for its jurisdiction. 

Jerez registered the Florida district court’s default 

judgment in the United States district court for the District of 

Columbia. He also applied for various writs of attachment on 

certain patents and trademark registrations held by alleged 

agencies and instrumentalities of Cuba; the latter, together 

with intervenor Camara de Comercio, manager of a trademark 

on Cuban cigars, are collectively the appellees in this action. 

The history of the successive writs is tangled and irrelevant to 

the outcome of the case. 

The appellees moved to vacate a writ of attachment that 

had been issued, while Jerez cross-moved for an order to show 

cause why a new writ of attachment should not issue against 

them. A magistrate judge found that the Florida state and 

district courts lacked jurisdiction under the FSIA to grant the 

default judgments, and accordingly granted the appellees’ 

motions to vacate the writ. Jerez v. Republic of Cuba, 777 F. 

Supp. 2d 6 (D.D.C. 2011). The district judge overruled 

Jerez’s objections to the magistrate judge’s order, Jerez v. 

Republic of Cuba, 964 F. Supp. 2d 52 (D.D.C. 2013), and 

issued an order to that effect. We affirm the district court. 

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* * * 

A default judgment rendered in excess of a court’s 

jurisdiction is void. See Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc. v. 

Islamic Republic of Iran, 734 F.3d 1175, 1181 (D.C. Cir. 

2013). Thus, a court asked to enforce a default judgment must 

entertain an attack on the jurisdiction of the court that issued 

the judgment. If it finds that the issuing court lacked 

jurisdiction, it must vacate the judgment. 

Then-Judge Ginsburg put the rules clearly and succinctly 

in Practical Concepts, Inc. v. Republic of Bolivia, 811 F.2d 

1543 (D.C. Cir. 1987): 

A defendant who knows of an action but believes the 

court lacks jurisdiction over his person or over the 

subject matter generally has an election. He may 

appear, raise the jurisdictional objection, and 

ultimately pursue it on direct appeal. If he so elects, 

he may not renew the jurisdictional objection in a 

collateral attack. . . . 

Alternatively, the defendant may refrain from 

appearing, thereby exposing himself to the risk of a 

default judgment. When enforcement of the default 

judgment is attempted, however, he may assert his 

jurisdictional objection. If he prevails on the 

objection, the default judgment will be vacated. 

Id. at 1547. See also Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. 

Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 706 

(1982); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF JUDGMENTS § 65 cmt. b 

(1982). 

Jerez points to Insurance Corp. of Ireland, where the 

Court said that “principles of res judicata apply to 

jurisdictional determinations.” Insurance Corp. of Ireland, 

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456 U.S. at 702 n.9. He also cites language from a number of 

cases to the effect that a judgment rendered by a court 

assuming subject-matter jurisdiction is preclusive, even if the 

judgment was incorrect, as long as the court did not “plainly 

usurp jurisdiction.” Weininger v. Castro, 462 F. Supp. 2d 

457, 475 (S.D.N.Y. 2006) (citing Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. v. 

Peaslee, 88 F.3d 152, 155 n.2 (2d Cir. 1996); Nemaizer v. 

Baker, 793 F.2d 58, 65 (2d Cir. 1986)). But those principles 

apply not to default judgments but only to contested cases, 

where the defendant “had an opportunity to litigate the 

question of subject-matter jurisdiction.” Insurance Corp. of 

Ireland, 456 U.S. at 702 n.9. It is clear from the context of the 

Supreme Court and circuit court cases that “opportunity” 

means not only awareness of the litigation but the defendant’s 

actually appearing in it. See id.; Chicot County Drainage 

Dist. v. Baxter State Bank, 308 U.S. 371, 376-78 (1940); 

Nemaizer, 793 F.2d at 65. In contrast, a defendant that has 

never appeared is always free under Insurance Corp. of 

Ireland and Practical Concepts to assert a jurisdictional attack 

later, in the court where enforcement of the default judgment 

is sought, and to have its jurisdictional objections considered 

de novo. See Practical Concepts, 811 F.2d at 1547. To the 

extent that Weininger suggests the contrary, we respectfully 

disagree (and are in any event precluded from agreement by 

Practical Concepts and Bell Helicopter). 

We would reach the same result if we approached the 

judgment of the Florida state court through the lens of the Full 

Faith and Credit Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1738. Under the Act, 

federal courts are “to accept the rules chosen by the State from 

which the judgment is taken,” including the rules with respect 

to jurisdiction. Kremer v. Chem. Constr. Corp., 456 U.S. 461, 

482 (1982); see also Marrese v. Am. Acad. of Orthopaedic 

Surgeons, 470 U.S. 373, 381 (1985). Florida law, like federal 

law, calls for a de novo examination of the Florida state 

court’s jurisdiction: “A judgment entered by a court which 

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lacks subject matter jurisdiction is void and subject to 

collateral attack under [Florida] rule 1.540 at any time.” 

McGhee v. Biggs, 974 So.2d 524, 526 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 

2008). And if the issuing court “did not have jurisdiction over 

the subject matter or the relevant parties, full faith and credit 

need not be given.” Underwriters Nat’l Assurance Co. v. N.C. 

Life & Accident & Health Ins. Guar. Ass’n, 455 U.S. 691, 705 

(1982). 

The FSIA contains a separate provision regarding default 

judgments, 28 U.S.C. § 1608(e), but it does not controvert the 

principles of Practical Concepts. The statute provides that no 

“judgment by default shall be entered by a court . . . unless the 

claimant establishes his claim or right to relief by evidence 

satisfactory to the court.” 28 U.S.C. § 1608(e). This provides 

foreign sovereigns a special protection akin to that assured the 

federal government by Fed. R. Civ. P. 55(e). See Commercial 

Bank of Kuwait v. Rafidain Bank, 15 F.3d 238, 242 (2d Cir. 

1994); RESTATEMENT (FOURTH) OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS 

LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 463 reporters’ note 2 

(Preliminary Draft No. 2, 2014). The rationale for such extra 

protection of sovereigns is that “the government is sometimes 

slow to respond and that the public fisc should be protected 

from claims that are unfounded but would be granted solely 

because the government failed to make a timely response.” 

Marziliano v. Heckler, 728 F.2d 151, 157-58 (2d Cir. 1984). 

In providing this additional protection, Rule 55(e) obviously 

complements rather than replaces the res judicata principles 

governing a defendant’s challenge to jurisdiction. 

The process required by § 1608(e) is therefore a 

supplement to, not a substitute for, the right of a foreign 

sovereign defendant who has not appeared in the judgmentgranting court to obtain de novo assessment of his 

jurisdictional objections. In Commercial Bank of Kuwait, for 

example, the court of appeals initially addressed jurisdiction 

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independently, 15 F.3d at 241, and then reviewed the district 

court’s application of § 1608(e), id. at 241-42. To the extent 

that the decision in Weininger rests on a view that the mandate 

of §1608(e) is a substitute for the ordinary rules of res 

judicata, see 462 F. Supp. 2d at 475, we again respectfully 

disagree. 

Finally, the jurisdiction of the Florida district court, 

which issued a default judgment on the strength of the state 

court’s judgment, is equally subject to de novo consideration 

here and presents no additional questions. 

* * * 

We turn now to a de novo assessment of the Florida state 

court’s jurisdiction. 

The FSIA, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1602-11, is “the sole basis for 

obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in our courts.” 

Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 

U.S. 428, 434 (1989). Under the FSIA, “a foreign state shall 

be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United 

States and of the States except as provided in sections 1605 to 

1607 of this chapter.” 28 U.S.C. § 1604. If no exception 

applies, then the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction. 

Mwani v. bin Laden, 417 F.3d 1, 15 (D.C. Cir. 2005). 

Jerez argues that two statutory exceptions apply here: the 

non-commercial tort exception, 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(5), and 

the terrorism exception, which at the relevant time was 

codified as 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(7) (2006). 

The non-commercial tort exception provides jurisdiction 

for cases alleging “personal injury or death, or damage to or 

loss of property, occurring in the United States and caused by 

the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any 

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official or employee of that foreign state while acting within 

the scope of his office or employment.” 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1605(a)(5). “[B]oth the tort and the injury must occur in the 

United States.” Persinger v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 729 

F.2d 835, 842 (D.C. Cir. 1984). “Congress’ primary purpose 

in enacting § 1605(a)(5) was to eliminate a foreign state’s 

immunity for traffic accidents and other torts committed in the 

United States, for which liability is imposed under domestic 

tort law.” Amerada Hess, 488 U.S. at 439-40. 

The problem for Jerez is that the defendants’ alleged 

tort—purposefully injecting him with hepatitis C, otherwise 

subjecting him to conditions that caused hepatitis C, and 

failing to warn him of the virus—occurred in Cuba. This is 

obvious as to the first two. As to the failure to warn, to the 

extent that such warnings might have had any value to Jerez 

after he reached the United States, the omissions might seem 

to have taken place in the United States. But none of the 

defendants sued here was within the United States, and we 

agree with the district court that under those circumstances the 

omissions cannot reasonably be said to have occurred within 

the United States. Jerez, 964 F. Supp. 2d at 56-57. Jerez has 

suggested that unnamed representatives in the Cuba Interest 

Section in Washington similarly failed to warn him, but has 

afforded no reason to believe that these representatives were 

aware of any relevant information. Id. at 57. 

To overcome this difficulty, Jerez argues that the virus 

continues to replicate in his body even now, and that “each 

deployment (through such viral replication) of the biological 

agent is an independent event” and “a separate and distinct 

tort.” But the continued replication of hepatitis C and Jerez’s 

cirrhosis of the liver describe an ongoing injury that he suffers 

in the United States as a result of the defendants’ acts in Cuba. 

The law is clear that “the entire tort”—including not only the 

injury but also the act precipitating that injury—must occur in 

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the United States. Asociacion de Reclamantes v. United 

Mexican States, 735 F.2d 1517, 1525 (D.C. Cir. 1984). 

Jerez seeks to reinforce the redeployment analysis by 

analogizing the defendants’ actions to a foreign agent’s 

delivery into the United States of an anthrax package or a 

bomb. But here the defendants’ infliction of injury on Jerez 

occurred entirely in Cuba, whereas the infliction of injury by 

the hypothetical anthrax package or bomb would occur 

entirely in the United States. 

Jerez’s invocation of the FSIA’s terrorism exception is 

equally problematic. In the version operative when Jerez sued 

in Florida, the statute provided an exception to sovereign 

immunity for cases alleging “personal injury or death that was 

caused by an act of torture.” 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(7) (2006). 

Jurisdiction is subject to two conditions: first, the state must 

have been “designated as a state sponsor of terrorism . . . at 

the time the act occurred,” or it must have been designated 

later because of the act in question; and second, the claimant 

must have been “a national of the United States . . . when the 

act upon which the claim is based occurred.” Id. (That 

section has since been replaced by 28 U.S.C. § 1605A.)

Jerez fails to satisfy either of these two independent 

conditions. First, Cuba was not designated a state sponsor of 

terrorism until 1982, and the defendants subjected Jerez to 

torture in 1970 and 1971. Further, Cuba was designated a 

state sponsor not because of the torture inflicted on Jerez, but 

because of “support for acts of international terrorism” such as 

those committed by the terrorist group M-19. Regulation 

Changes on Exports: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Near 

E. & S. Asian Affairs of the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, 

97th Cong. 13 (1982) (statement of Ernest Johnson, Jr., 

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs, Department 

of State). 

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Faced with these obstacles, Jerez again invokes the 

redeployment theory—that hepatitis C continues to replicate 

in his body, daily inflicting new acts of torture. Now that 

Cuba is designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and he is a 

citizen of the United States, he reasons, the continued 

replication of the virus in his body constitutes a stream of 

contemporaneous acts of torture and thus satisfies both 

requirements of the terrorism exception. But in ordinary 

language the ongoing replication of hepatitis C and the 

cirrhosis of the liver are the injuries that Jerez is suffering, not 

acts of torture. Those acts occurred in Cuba before 1982, 

before Jerez became a United States national and before Cuba 

was designated a state sponsor. 

Because no statutory exception to sovereign immunity 

under the FSIA applies, the Florida state court and the Florida 

district court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. See Amerada 

Hess, 488 U.S. at 433. Their default judgments are therefore 

void. As a result there is no legal basis for the writ of 

attachment that Jerez seeks and the appellees are entitled to 

grant of their motion to vacate the previously outstanding 

writ. See Practical Concepts, 811 F.2d at 1547. Accordingly 

we need not address the appellees’ other arguments. 

* * * 

The judgment of the district court is 

 Affirmed. 

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