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The $24 Billion Judgment Against China in Missouri’s COVID Suit
This article was written by Prof. William S. Dodge (George Washington University Law School) and first published on Transnational Litigation Blog. The original version can be found at Transnational Litigation Blog. Reposted with permission.
On March 7, 2025, Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr. (Eastern District of Missouri) entered a default judgment for more than $24 billion against the People’s Republic of China and eight other Chinese defendants for hoarding personal protective equipment (PPE) during the early days of the COVID pandemic in violation of federal and state antitrust laws. The Eighth Circuit had previously held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) barred most of Missouri’s claims but that the hoarding claim fell within the act’s commercial activity exception.
Missouri now has the judgment against China that it wanted. But Missouri may find that judgment hard to enforce. As discussed below, there appear to be significant procedural problems with the judgment that at least some defendants might raise. More broadly, the properties of foreign states and their agencies or instrumentalities are entitled to immunity from execution under the FSIA. Immunity from execution is broader than immunity from suit, and it is not clear that any of the defendants have property in the United States that can be used to satisfy the judgment. Read more
Trending Topics in German PIL 2024 (Part 1 – Illegal Gambling and “Volkswagen”)
At the end of each year I publish an article (in German) about the Conflict of Laws developments in Germany of the last twelve months, covering more or less the year 2024 and the last months of 2023. I thought it would be interesting for the readers of this blog to get an overview over those topics that seem to be most trending.
The article focuses on the following topics:
- Restitution of Money lost in Illegal Gambling
- Applicable Law in the Dieselgate litigation
- The (Non-)Valitidy of Online Marriages
- New German conflict-of-law rules regarding gender afiliation / identity
- Reforms in international name law
I will start in this post with the two first areas that are mainly dealing with questions of Rome I and Rome II while in my follow-up post I will focus on the three areas that are not harmonized by EU law (yet) and are mainly questions of family law.
Chinese Judicial Practice on Asymmetric Choice of Court Agreements in International Civil & Commercial Disputes
By Yuchen Li, a PhD student at Wuhan University.
A. Introduction
An asymmetric choice of court agreement is commonly used in international commercial transactions, especially in financial agreements, which usually allows one party (option holder) an optional choice about the forum in which proceedings may be brought but the other (non-option holder) an exclusive choice to sue in a designated court.[1] A typical example is as follows:
‘(A) The courts of England have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any disputes ….
(B) The Parties agree that the courts of England are the most appropriate and convenient courts … to settle Disputes and accordingly no Party will argue to the contrary.
(C) This Clause is for the benefit of the Finance Parties only. As a result, no Finance Party shall be prevented from taking proceedings relating to a Dispute in any other courts with jurisdiction. To the extent allowed by law, the Finance Parties may take concurrent proceedings in any number of jurisdictions.’ [2]
In recent years, issues concerning asymmetric choice of court agreements have been controversial in cases within some jurisdictions.[3] Despite the significant amount of research on asymmetric choice of court agreements, little attention has been paid to Chinese stance on this topic. With Chinese private parties actively engaging in international transactions, Chinese attitude towards such clauses is important for commercial parties and academic researchers. This article gives a glimpse of how Chinese courts handle asymmetric choice of court agreements in international and commercial civil litigations.[4] Read more
News
RabelsZ 89 (2025): Issue 3
The latest issue of RabelsZ has just been released. It contains the contributions to the symposium in honor of Jürgen Basedow that was held in Hamburg in November 2024. The table of contents is available here. All content is Open Access: CC BY 4.0 and more articles are available Online First.
Eva-Maria Kieninger, Konrad Duden and Ralf Michaels, Preface to the Symposium Issue, pp. 409–410, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0046
Hannah L. Buxbaum, The New Unilateralism in EU Cross-Border Regulation: Objectives, Methods, Institution, oo. 411–431, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0043
For years, Europe was a site of resistance to regulatory unilateralism, particularly as practiced by the United States. Today, though, there are signs of a robust unilateralism at work in EU regulatory practices. To some extent it simply mirrors practices adopted in the United States and elsewhere: Like other lawmakers, the EU has begun to act unilaterally where necessary to achieve effective regulation of its own markets and to protect local interests. In other respects, though, the new unilateralism in the EU presents quite differently. First, the EU increasingly uses its own legislation not to advance purely local regulatory interests, but rather to achieve international or global goals – classically a more multilateral objective. Second, under EU law individual regulations in particular substantive areas are embedded in a larger framework of norms and values that claim universal appeal. In both of these regards, the EU version of unilateralism appears more benign than purely »self-interested« unilateralism. It nevertheless raises important questions about the way that local laws and institutions are used to project regulatory power in the international arena. The goal of this article is to explore these questions. It begins by describing the characteristics of this new unilateralism, in terms of both its doctrinal foundations and its regulatory objectives. It then focuses on one particular mechanism: the adequacy regime established under EU data protection law.
Launch of the Bahrain International Commercial Court
The Bahrain International Commercial Court (BICC) was launched on 5 November 2025. It joins the long established Dubai International Financial Centre Courts, Abu Dhabi Global Market Courts and Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre in the Middle East as a specialist court devoted to resolving international commercial disputes and operating under special procedural rules.
The BICC was developed in partnership with the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). It shares many key features with the SICC such as a multinational bench, foreign counsel representation and use of the English language in proceedings. Of particular note is the appeal mechanism for BICC judgments; as discussed previously here, appeals from the BICC will be heard by the International Committee of the SICC.
ASADIP Conference Rio 2025 (report) and San Salvador 2026 date (20-23 October)
The ASADIP conference is an annual highlight of the discipline. The reports from the 2025 conference in Rio de Janeiro are now available, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, here
And the location and date for the 2026 have been set for San Salvador, El Salvador, 20-23 October. See you there.