Scalin v. Societe Nationale SNCF SA, No. 18-1887 (7th Cir. 2021)
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Plaintiffs, descendants of Jews rounded up in France after it signed an armistice with Germany in 1940, alleged that persons being sent to death camps were loaded on trains operated by the French national railroad, SNCF. Their belongings were stolen by railroad workers and given to the Nazis. They sought compensation for those thefts. They cited the expropriation exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which applies when the allegations concern “rights in property taken in violation of international law,” 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(3).
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the suit. Plaintiffs must seek their remedy under a French administrative-claims system for compensating victims of the Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime. The court cited “comity-based abstention, calling this a “triple-foreign suit”: plaintiffs allege that nationals of a country other than the U.S. were injured by a foreign entity in a foreign nation. Although the plaintiffs claim that one of them is a U.S. citizen, they are heirs of the victims. The fact that a foreign national’s claim has been transferred to a U.S. citizen does not make it less a foreign claim. The proper location of a suit depends on the original acts, not on the plaintiff’s current residence. Their complaint mentions conversion and unjust enrichment but does not identify a source of law, and federal common law, state law, and section 1350 all fall short in a triple-foreign suit.
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