Anything to bitch about Trump ...
Nothing is as cut and Dry as Sugar Tits Purports ...
To bring a successful suit, plaintiffs must follow specific rules, including rules on how to serve the foreign country. Section 1608(a)(3), for example, requires in certain situations that service “be addressed and dispatched by the clerk of the court to the head of the ministry of foreign affairs of the foreign state concerned.”
Based on this provision, the plaintiffs in this case requested that the clerk of the D.C. District Court serve Sudan’s foreign minister at the Sudanese embassy in Washington. The court mailed the papers to the embassy, but Sudan never responded. The plaintiffs moved for a default judgement, and the district court granted the plaintiffs’ request and awarded over $300 million in damages.
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The brief further explains that this view “is reinforced by the United States’ treaty obligations and diplomatic interests.” The government elaborates that “[f]ailing to protect mission inviolability within the United States would risk harm to the United States’ foreign relations” as it must ensure “that foreign states need not appear in domestic courts unless and until they are properly served” and that the U.S. receives “reciprocal treatment in courts abroad.”
Likewise, other nations filed briefs in support of Sudan. Notably, Saudi Arabia submitted an amicus brief expressing its “strong interest in preserving the inviolability of foreign missions.” This brief, as the New York Times recently noted, was curiously timed, given that it was filed “[n]ot long before Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.”
https://www.rstreet.org/2018/11/06/...-a-foreign-embassy-created-a-legal-kerfuffle/
