Court Opinion

ID: 9595816
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:43:31.731481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:51.426749
License: Public Domain

WOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.1
This is a heart-breaking case. No parent can fail to empathize with Joyce and Stanley Boim, who lost their son to the evil of terrorism just as he was on the brink of all of life’s promise. Nothing can bring David Boim back, but the Boims have taken advantage of a statute that Congress passed that was designed to provide some degree of accountability for those who commit such awful acts. See 18 U.S.C. § 2333(a). In Boim v. Quranic Literacy Inst. & Holy Land Found., 291 F.3d 1000 (7th Cir.2002) (“Boim I”), this court decided that the set of possible defendants in such an action includes not only the direct actors (here, Amjad Hinawi and Khalil Tawfiq Al-Sharif) and the organization to which they belonged and that directed their actions (here, said to be Hamas), but also organizations that aid and abet the former two. When all is said and done, the en banc majority has reaffirmed the latter ruling, though it does so under a slightly different rubric. But, in our zeal to bring justice to bereaved parents, we must not lose sight of the need to prove liability on the facts that are presented to the court. Assumptions and generalizations are no substitute for proof. Particularly because, unfortunately, this probably will not be the last case brought by a victim of international terrorism, it is crucial that we be as clear as we can in fleshing out the statutory requirements and that we do not rush to judgment. Because I do not agree with the majority’s articulation and application of some of the governing legal standards, and I find too many central facts to be in dispute, I am still of the view that this case needs to be remanded for further proceedings.
I begin, however, by underscoring that I agree with the en banc majority’s analysis on a number of points. First, throughout *720the proceedings before this court, we have unanimously rejected the district court’s decision to give collateral estoppel effect to the findings in the case that was litigated in the District of Columbia, Holy Land Found. for Relief & Dev. v. Ashcroft, 219 F.Supp.2d 57 (D.D.C.2002), affirmed, 333 F.3d 156 (D.C.Cir.2003) (“HLF v. Ashcroft”). See Boim v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Dev., 511 F.3d 707, 720-33 (7th Cir.2007) (“Boim II”). We all agree that it was error to grant summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (“HLF”), and that further proceedings are required. Second, under the new analysis that the en banc majority has undertaken, which uses “a chain of explicit statutory incorporations by reference,” ante, at 690, it was error to grant summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs against Muhammad Salah. Again, we all agree that there are problems with Salah’s part of the case. The en banc majority is reversing the finding of liability outright because Salah could not have rendered material support to Hamas between the effective date of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A, September 13, 1994, and the date of David Boim’s murder, May 13, 1996, because he was in Israeli custody between January 1993 and November 1997. Ante, at 691. In fact, the Boim II panel majority took a less absolute approach. It found that the district court erred in concluding that Sa-lah’s liability could be established only by showing that (1) he knew of Hamas’s terrorist activities, (2) he desired to help those activities succeed, and (3) through his participation in the Hamas conspiracy, acts of co-conspirators sufficed to show that he engaged in some act of helping to bring about Boim’s murder. Rather than reversing outright, as the en banc majority has done, the Boim II panel majority would have reversed the summary judgment in the plaintiffs’ favor and remanded to give plaintiffs the opportunity to identify “evidence that would permit a reasonable factfinder to find that Salah’s actions on behalf of Hamas in some way caused or contributed to David Boim’s death.” Boim II, 511 F.3d at 748.
I am persuaded by the en banc majority’s statutory analysis that the correct result is reversal of the finding against Sa-lah, rather than a remand for further proceedings. Its careful exegesis of the way that the governing statutes in this area work together demonstrates why the furnishing of material assistance is a ground for liability under 18 U.S.C. § 2333. I thus do not dissent from the en banc court’s decision that the judgment against Salah must be reversed.
It is the en banc majority’s analysis of the cases against the Quranic Literacy Institute (“QLI”) and the American Muslim Society (“AMS”) (along with the Islamic Association of Palestine) that I find problematic. I continue to believe that the decisions in Boim I and Boim II correctly found that Congress intended, in passing 18 U.S.C. § 2333, to create an intentional tort, that it meant to “extend civil liability for acts of international terrorism to the full reaches of traditional tort law,” Boim I, 291 F.3d at 1010, that nothing in Central Bank of Denver, N.A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N.A., 511 U.S. 164, 114 S.Ct. 1439, 128 L.Ed.2d 119 (1994), suggests that Congress lacks the power to do so when it wishes, and finally that § 2333 does impose secondary liability on those who aid and abet acts of terrorism. The en banc majority expresses doubts about this holding, although in the end it neither adopts it nor rejects it. Instead, it turns to “an alternative and more promising ground for bringing donors to terrorist organizations within the grasp of section 2333.” Ante, at 690.
*721Working through a chain of statutes— from § 2333(a) (treble damages action for person injured by an act of international terrorism), to § 2331(1) (definition of international terrorism), to § 2339A (providing material support for something that violates a federal criminal law is itself a crime), to § 2332 (criminalizing the killing of any American citizen outside the United States) — the en banc majority concludes that there is primary liability under § 2333(a) for someone who donates money “to a terrorist group that targets Americans outside the United States.” Ante, at 690. The en banc majority then establishes several criteria for the claim it has recognized: (1) it is the fact of contributing to a terrorist organization, not the amount of the contribution, that is the key to liability, ante, at 691; and (2) there is a knowledge requirement, to the effect that the donor-defendant must have known that the money would be used “in preparation for or in carrying out the killing or attempted killing of, conspiring to kill, or inflicting bodily injury on, an American citizen abroad.” Ante, at 691. At that point, however, the en banc majority announces that its theory does not establish primary liability after all — instead, a claim based on material support “has the character of secondary liability. Through a chain of incorpo-rations by reference, Congress has expressly imposed liability on a class of aiders and abettors.” Id.
I would have thought that this was exactly the conclusion that the Boim I panel reached. By labeling its theory as one of primary liability, the en banc majority is apparently trying to reap the advantages of both kinds of theories. It acknowledges that in order to prove a primary liability case, the plaintiffs would need to establish “the ordinary tort requirements relating to fault, state of mind, causation, and foreseeability.” Ante, at 692. But, it says, those requirements do not apply here, because “functionally the primary violator is an aider and abettor or other secondary actor.” Ante, at 692.
I believe that the following is a fair summary of the formal requirements that the en banc majority has announced for proving a case under § 2333:
1. Act requirement: the defendant must have provided material assistance, in the form of money or other acts, directly or indirectly, to an organization that commits terrorist acts.
2. State of mind requirement: the defendant must either know that the donee organization (or the ultimate recipient of the assistance) engages in such acts, or the defendant must be deliberately indifferent to whether or not it does so.
3. Causation: there is no requirement of showing classic “but-for” causation, nor, apparently, is there even a requirement of showing that the defendant’s action would have been sufficient to support the primary actor’s unlawful activities or any limitation on remoteness of liability.
There is little to criticize in the first of these criteria, as an abstract matter. The second may also pass muster, again as an abstract matter. For both of these, my problem with the en banc majority’s opinion lies more in the way that they are applied to these facts, as I explain further below, than in their formal scope. With respect to the third requirement, there is both a theoretical problem and a problem with the application, and so I begin with that.
The en banc majority asserts that its position on causation is supported by a number of cases that it discusses. Those cases, however, do not go as far as the en banc majority claims, nor am I familiar *722with anything else in the law of torts that does so. It is important here to be precise once again about areas of agreement and areas of disagreement. The en banc majority is quite right to point out that literal “but-for” causation cannot be shown in certain cases, and in those cases, the courts have accepted substitutes for the “but-for” showing. Thus, in the case where there are two independent acts, and either one alone would have brought about the injury, a defendant who was responsible for one of those acts cannot defeat liability by pointing out that the other one would have been enough to create the harm by itself. That is the principle illustrated by Kingston v. Chicago & N.W. Ry. Co., 191 Wis. 610, 211 N.W. 913 (1927), discussed in our decision in Maxwell v. KPMG LLP, 520 F.3d 713, 716 (7th Cir.2008). It is also the principle endorsed by the most recent draft of the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of the Law of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm, § 27 (“Restatement (Third) of Torts”), which says “[i]f multiple acts occur, each of which alone would have been a factual cause under § 26 of the physical harm at the same time in the absence of the other act(s), each act is regarded as a factual cause of the harm.” This is a far cry from saying that cause need not be proven if there are multiple sufficient causes; the ALI’s draft acknowledges simply that some harms may be overdetermined, and in those cases, cause can be proven by demonstrating that the defendant’s tortious conduct was sufficient to produce the harm. Maxwell, cited by the en banc majority, illustrates this principle as well as anything: “There are also cases in which a condition that is not necessary, but is sufficient, is deemed the cause of an injury, as when two fires join and destroy the plaintiffs property and each one would have destroyed it by itself and so was not a necessary condition; yet each of the fire-makers (if negligent) is liable to the plaintiff for having ‘caused’ the injury.” 520 F.3d at 716. The key word here is “sufficient”: the plaintiff cannot win without showing that the defendant’s act would have been sufficient to cause the injury, even though it may be the case that other acts might also have been sufficient.
The other examples the en banc majority uses fit the rule articulated in Restatement (Third) § 27. Thus, if there were two wrongful causes and a third innocent one (two arsonists plus a lightning strike, for example), any of which would have caused the injury at issue, the person responsible for one of the wrongful acts cannot take refuge in the fact that other sufficient causes were also present. Or if, as in the classic case of Summers v. Tice, 33 Cal.2d 80, 199 P.2d 1 (1948), there are two possible causes, either of which would have been sufficient to cause the harm (a bullet from each of two guns, either one of which would have sufficed to harm the third party), once again sufficient cause has been proven even if necessary cause cannot be. Ditto with the en banc majority’s example of several firms that spill toxic waste that finds its way into groundwater and damages property. Even if the damage is slight, that wrongful act is sufficient for liability. Any remaining uncertainties can be resolved through rules on apportionment of damages.
In the end, the en banc majority is reduced to relying on a case where a roomful of junior high school students erupted into a melee and a bystander student was seriously hurt. See Keel v. Hainline, 331 P.2d 397 (Okla.1958). A closer look at the facts of that case is useful. Approximately 35 to 40 students were in their music classroom one day, but because the instructor failed to show up on time, they were unsupervised for about a half hour. *723Here is the court’s description of what unfolded:
During the absence of the instructor, several of the male students indulged in what they termed “horse play”. This activity consisted of throwing wooden blackboard erasers, chalk, cardboard drum covers, and, in one instance, a “coke” bottle, at each other. It appears that two or three of the defendants went to the north end of the class room and the remaining defendants went to the south end of the room. From vantage points behind the blackboard on the north end and the piano on the south end, they threw the erasers and chalk back and forth at one another. This activity was carried on for a period of some 30 minutes, and terminated only when an eraser, thrown by defendant [Larry] Jennings, struck plaintiff in the eye, shattering her eye glasses, and resulting in the loss of the use of such eye.
331 P.2d at 398-99. The defendants to whom the court refers were six boys — two or three at one end of the room, the rest at the other end of the room. Robert Keel, the plaintiff-in-error, was in one of those groups — the facts do not mention whether Keel was on Jennings’s “team” or the other one. The court first found that what it characterized as “the willful and deliberate throwing of wooden blackboard erasers at other persons in a class room containing 35 to 40 students” was wrongful conduct, because it amounted to an assault and battery. Id. at 399. The intent of the actors was immaterial. Addressing Keel’s argument that there was no evidence that he aided or abetted Jennings in the final throw that injured the plaintiff, the court said:
It is undisputed that defendant Keel participated in the wrongful activity engaged in by the other defendants of throwing wooden blackboard erasers at each other back and forth across a class room containing 35 to 40 students, although most of the testimony indicates that defendant Keel’s participation was limited to the retrieving of such erasers and handing them to other defendants for further throwing. Keel aided and abetted the wrongful throwing by procuring and supplying to the throwers the articles to be thrown. It is immaterial whether defendant Keel aided, abetted or encouraged defendant Jennings in throwing the eraser in such a manner as to injure Burge, or not, since it is virtually undisputed that defendant Keel aided, abetted or encouraged the wrongful activity of throwing wooden erasers at other persons, which resulted in the injury to Burge.
331 P.2d at 400 (emphasis added). The en banc majority reads this as a holding that Keel was liable “even though there was no proven, or even likely, causal connection between anything he did and the injury.” Ante, at 697. But that reading entirely ignores the perspective that the Oklahoma court adopted. Keel and the other five boys jointly created a dangerous situation in the classroom. By acting together, they greatly enhanced the risk of harm to the other students in the room. So viewed, there is a readily observable causal link between the collective action of the six boys and the harm the plaintiff suffered. Whether we call Keel’s contribution “material support” or something else does not matter — the point here is that the Oklahoma court did not dispense with the requirement of proving causation.
So, too, must we insist on proof that QLI’s and AMS’s actions amounted to at least a sufficient cause of the terrorist act that killed David Boim, even if, on these facts, there were multiple such causes. The Boim II panel majority opinion outlines ways in which this might be done. I would summarize these approaches to the *724causation element as follows: there must be proof (1) that the actual recipient organization received a non-trivial amount of money from either QLI or AMS, and (2) that the recipient was, itself, sufficiently affiliated with Hamas that those dollars indirectly supported Hamas’s terrorist mission. Because money is fungible, the combination of the link to Hamas and the receipt of an amount that would have been sufficient to finance the shooting at the Beit El bus stop would be enough to show that the “material assistance” of giving money caused the terrorist act that took David Boim’s life. (There is no allegation here that either QLI or AMS directly tunneled money to Hamas; had there been, this obviously would have sufficed as well.)
Another reason why I find it ill-advised to exempt plaintiffs suing under § 2333 on a “material assistance” theory from showing causation is that this approach also appears to eliminate the need to show what was classically called “proximate cause.” As the Proposed Final Draft to the Restatement (Third) of Torts points out, that term is imprecise at best. See Restatement (Third) of Torts, ch. 6, Special Note on Proximate Cause. The new Restatement refers to this concept as “scope of liability,” in recognition of the fact that “[t]ort law does not impose liability on an actor for all harm factually caused by the actor’s tortious conduct.” Id. At some point, the harm is simply too remote from the original tortious act to justify holding the actor responsible for it. It may be the case that the boundaries of liability are wider for intentional torts, see Restatement (Third) of Torts § 33, but that does not mean that they are limitless. In part, this reflects the reality that as the temporal or factual chain between the tor-tious act and the harm becomes ever longer, the likelihood of intervening or superseding causes becomes greater. See generally Restatement (Third) of Torts § 34. The en banc majority freely concedes that there are no limits at all to its rule, and that a donor who gave funds to an organization affiliated with Hamas in 1995 might still be liable under § 2333 half a century later, in 2045. I see no warrant for assuming that § 2333, unlike the rest of tort law, contains no scope-of-liability limitations. I note as well that such an open-ended rule would be in serious tension with the general four-year statute of limitations Congress has passed for civil actions based on statutes passed after 1990 (like this one). See 28 U.S.C. § 1658.
The scope of the causation element is not my only concern about the en banc majority’s opinion. My other problem is with its application of the principles that, at a high level of generality, state the law correctly. As I noted earlier, the plaintiffs must prove that the defendant provided material assistance to an organization that commits terrorist acts. But what does it take to qualify as such an organization? The Boims did not sue Hamas, nor does their case rely on the proposition that QLI or AMS sent money directly to Hamas. We must decide how far down the chain of affiliates, in this shadowy world, the statute was designed to reach, and how deeply Hamas must be embedded in the recipient organization. QLI and AMS argue strenuously that at worst they sent money to charitable organizations with some kind of link to Hamas. Some might have been analogous to wholly owned subsidiaries; some might have been analogous to joint ventures; some might have been independent entities that accepted funding from Hamas as well as other more reputable organizations. The record throws little light on these matters, because the district court thought them irrelevant. As I understand the en banc majority opinion, it is saying that even if an independent day care center receives $1 from organization *725H known to be affiliated with Hamas, not only the day care center but also anyone who gave to H is liable for all acts of terrorism by Hamas operatives from that time forward against any and all Americans who are outside the United States.
That is a proposition of frightening, and I believe unwise, breadth. The en banc majority has tried to carve out humanitarian non-governmental organizations like the American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, which (fortuitously) may also benefit from a “medical services” exemption in the statute. But I am not sure that it has succeeded. Those worthy organizations are not the only ones committed to nondiscriminatory treatment of all needy human beings. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees sponsors many programs designed to assist people in war-torn areas. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (“UNRWA”) has been in existence since 1950. See http://www.unhcr.org/partners/ PARTNERS/48fdeced20.html (last visited November 11, 2008). It describes itself as “the main provider of basic services — education, health, relief and social services — to over 4.1 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East.” Id. The odds are strong that some of the agencies that UN-RWA helps may also receive assistance from Hamas. The en banc majority does not tell us whether, if QLI or AMS also happens to give money to such an agency, the donor has violated § 2333 by doing so.
The en banc majority also slides over the statutory requirement (derived from its chain of statutory connections) that the entity providing material assistance must know that the donee plans to commit terrorist acts against U.S. citizens. Ante, at 691-92, 693. All that is necessary, we are told, is that
a donor [to Hamas — and presumably to another organization with an adequate link to Hamas, whatever that may be] who knew the aims and activities of the organization [only Hamas? or the affiliated recipient?] — would know that Ha-mas was gunning for Israelis, that Americans are frequent visitors to and sojourners in Israel, that some Israeli citizens have U.S. citizenship as well, and that donations to Hamas, by augmenting Hamas’s resources, would enable Hamas to kill or wound, or try to kill, or conspire to kill more people in Israel.
Ante, at 693-94. This is awfully vague. Americans travel, and are known to travel, to every country on the face of the globe— they even go to places like Antarctica that are not even countries. If one could, it would be more realistic and sound as a legal matter simply to hold that it makes no difference whether or not the terrorist acts that the organization commits are directed toward Americans. The only problem with such a holding — which otherwise would be a routine application of the doctrine of transferred intent — is that the statutory basis for a tort action under § 2333 depends upon a finding that the material support violated U.S. federal criminal law, and that here the crime in question is the killing of an American citizen outside the United States. In my view, given the language of the statutes that Congress has passed thus far, we are required to take a more restricted view of § 2333. A statute focusing on extraterritorial killings of Americans would still be a strong tool against terrorist activities and organizations that threaten vital U.S. interests. A1 Qaeda, for example, trumpets its intent to target Americans whenever and wherever it can. If the plaintiffs could show both that Hamas has done the same thing and further that Hamas’s intent should be attributed to the donee organiza*726tion (recalling once again that neither QLI nor AMS gives money directly to Hamas), then a § 2333 claim may proceed; otherwise, it may not. Put differently, I find it difficult to read § 2333 as creating a claim against an organization that has, in effect, declared war on the entirety of civilization.
The Boim II opinion explains the problems with a finding, on the present record, that Hamas was indeed responsible for David Boim’s murder. That finding rests entirely on the affidavit submitted by Dr. Reuven Paz. The majority accepts that affidavit as adequate, noting only the uncontroversial point that experts are allowed to rely on hearsay and other inadmissible evidence. See Fed.R.Evid. 703 (expert may rely on facts or data “reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject”). No one doubts this. The panel’s point in Boim II was that, at least since Daubert v. Morrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), and the revision of FED. R. EVID. 702, there must nevertheless be a solid foundation for the expert’s opinion. Rule 702 puts the point this way: the expert may offer an opinion “if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.” It is these threshold criteria that are at issue. No one is saying that these requirements cannot be met in this case, or in any other case involving international teiTorism. They just have not been satisfied yet, and so QLI and AMS should have won a remand on this basis as well.
For these reasons, I would remand for further proceedings on the claims against QLI and AMS. I concur in the en banc majority’s opinion insofar as it reverses the judgment against Salah and it remands for further proceedings on the claims against HLF.

. Judge Rovner and Judge Williams join this opinion except with respect to Salah’s liability.