Pensacola firm wins a nearly $1 billion judgment against Iran over terrorist attacks

PENSACOLA, Fla. (WALA) - It’s a wrongful-death claim. But this is no ordinary lawsuit.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia last month awarded nearly $1 billion to victims of terrorism attacks by Iran in Iraq over nearly a decade.

One of those attacks took the life of 29-year-old Sgt. Joshua Hager in February 2007 during a patrol from Camp Ramadi when an explosion rocked the armored Humvee he was riding in. It’s a day his father, Kris Hager, said he never will forget.

“Six days before he was killed, he said, ‘Dad, I just called to tell you, I love you,’” said Hager, who lives in Tampa, Florida. “That was the last time I heard my son’s voice.”

The Pensacola law firm Levin Papantonio represented Hager, along with some 1,400 people across the United States. They were U.S. service members or contractors injured or killed in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. The suit, filed in 2018 under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, alleges Iran sponsored the attacks. It names the nation; two banks, including the Iranian central bank; the Ministry of Intelligence and Security; the Revolutionary Guard Corps; and the National Iranian Oil Co.

None of the defendants bothered to send lawyers to defend against the lawsuits. The judge ruled that all but the oil company were responsible for the terrorist strikes.

Even though Iran was a no-show in court, plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Paulos said winning the case was no easy task.

“The statute requires that the plaintiffs prove every element of their claim to the federal district court’s satisfaction,” he said. “So, we have found that in these cases that the courts take that role very seriously.”

The $983.58 million judgment includes more than $284 million for pain and suffering, $43 million for economic damages and $655.7 million for punitive damages. It covers 111 plaintiffs who were part of “test cases” used by the court to establish a factual record.

It took six years to gather the evidence to prove the claims one by one. It involved prying thousands of documents from the U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense, which Paulos said haven’t always been cooperative. A court filing indicates that the Defense Department is nearly 1,000 pages behind schedule in producing documents it had agreed to make available to the plaintiffs.

“We are, you know, establishing a factual record for things that happened thousands of miles away, sometimes, you know, over two decades ago,” Paulos said. “And either our eyewitnesses are either all deceased or are the bad guys, themselves.”

Ordinarily, countries are immune from civil lawsuits in the United States. But there is a hard-to-prove exception for terrorism. The judge ruled last year that five of the defendants were liable for providing material support to nine terrorist organizations. Paulos said it is the first time a court has issued a global ruling of material support involving so many different terrorist organizations.

Armed with that ruling, the lawyers then set out to prove the specifics of 12 attacks affecting the 111 plaintiffs. Lawyers presented evidence from service members who survived attacks, along with multiple experts and more than 1,000 exhibits.

Kris Hager said his son was an Army Ranger instructor at Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola but “wrote his own transfer” to a Colorado-based unit so he could get deployed to Iraq. He said Joshua Hager bought a home in Pueblo, Colorado, but never spent a day there because he went straight to Iraq.

“He was involved in what became the surge,” he told FOX10 News. “And it was an effort where his group saved a bunch of Iraqi civilians – men, and women and children.”

Attorneys successfully argued that bomb that struck Hager’s vehicle was no ordinary homemade improvised explosive device but a weapon manufactured and distributed by Iran.

Collecting on the judgement through traditional means is all but pointless. No one expects the ayatollah to write a check. But Paulos said he expects the plaintiffs to be able to tap into a fund set up by the federal government with penalties and fines paid by companies caught violating U.S. sanctions.

That fund has at least $950 million available for distribution in 2025. Another avenue, Paulos said, is to go after seized Iranian assets.

“So that could be bank accounts,” he said. “That could be property, that could be other assets that are within the reach of the jurisdiction of the United States are our allies.”

The share of the judgement owed to Joshua Hager’s estate exceeds $8 million. But Kris Hater said he never has thought about the money.

“I am absolutely honored that I understand Iran can be held accountable for what they did, not just to my son, but so many (who) were there,” he said. “And we need to know that. You know, people ask me, does it ever get better? None of this gets better. It gets different.”

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