Pharma companies sued over claims of funding terrorism

The U.S. Supreme Court gave a boost yesterday (24 June) to a challenge by 21 pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, led by AstraZeneca, to a lawsuit accusing them of illegally helping to fund terrorism that killed or injured hundreds of American troops and civilians in Iraq, Reuters has reported.

Hundreds of American service members and civilians, and their families, sued the defendant companies, part of five corporate families: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, GE Healthcare USA, Johnson & Johnson, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche.

The plaintiffs accused major U.S. and European pharmaceutical and device makers of providing corrupt payments to the Hezbollah-sponsored militia group Jaysh al-Mahdi in order to obtain medical supply contracts from Iraq's health ministry. They alleged the militia group controlled the health ministry.

The lawsuit, brought in 2017 in federal court in Washington, seeks unspecified damages under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a federal law that lets Americans pursue claims related to "an act of international terrorism."

A federal trial judge in 2020 dismissed the lawsuit, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2022 overturned the decision.