Ministry of Defense and Support for the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran v. Elahi

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by the Iranian government in a case concerning the brother of a murdered dissident who is seeking to collect $2.8 million in damages.

Cyrus Elahi was shot and killed as he left his apartment building in Paris on Oct. 23, 1990. Ten years later, his brother, Dariush, brought a wrongful death suit against Iran and the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming Iranian agents assassinated Cyrus.

Although neither defendant appeared in court, the judge found for the brother and entered a default judgment against Iran and MOIS for $11.7 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.

Dariush Elahi then sought to collect by attaching a $2.8 million judgment obtained by the Iranian Ministry of Defense against California-based Cubic Defense Systems. Iran originally won the $2.8 million judgment against Cubic for the company’s breach of contract following the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979.

But while that case got underway, Elahi received $2.3 million from the U.S. government, from a fund established in 2000 to compensate victims of Iranian terrorism in cases where Tehran was not paying sums awarded in courts.

In May 2007, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 that Elahi’s award from the U.S. government did not make him ineligible to pursue the $2.8 million linked to the military contract.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted review of the case on June 23, and will hear oral arguments in the fall.

Question presented: Whether a disputed judgment against a military contractor at issue between Iran and the United States before the Claims Tribunal in The Hague is subject to attachment under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.