What You Need to Know About Missouri’s Lawsuit Against China Over COVID-19

From The Daily Signal.com (April 22):

The devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is compounded by the possibility—some would say likelihood—that it could have been averted or its impact mitigated.

If, for example, China failed in a timely manner to disclose the threat of the new coronavirus or misrepresented its cause or severity, there could be political or economic consequences.

But could China actually be sued by COVID-19 victims? Missouri appears to think so and filed suit in federal court Tuesday.

Suing a government is different than suing private individuals or companies. The first, and biggest, hurdle is the legal principle, often called sovereign or state immunity, that a government cannot be sued without its consent.

In the U.S. Constitution, this principle is the basis for the 11^th Amendment, which prohibits lawsuits in federal court “against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”

Sovereign immunity, however, is not absolute. A government can give its consent to be sued in certain circumstances or can waive its immunity in different ways.

Congress enacted the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) in 1976 to clarify the circumstances in which a foreign government can be sued in American courts.

It says that “a foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and of the States except as provided in” that law. The Supreme Court has said that the FSIA is “the sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in the courts of this country.”

China, therefore, can be sued by COVID-19 victims only if the suit fits within one of the exceptions in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

On April 21, Missouri filed suit in U.S. District Court against the People’s Republic of China, several Chinese government entities, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese Communist Party.

Missouri alleges that China misled the World Health Organization about the nature of the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19, allowed it to spread, delayed reporting evidence of human-to-human transmission, and even censored information about it.

Those actions, Missouri says, allowed the virus to spread rapidly around the world, into the United States, and into Missouri. The lawsuit claims that these actions violated Missouri law and harmed Missouri residents. [read more]

Good for Missouri! This should really be a class or in this case a “state” action suit.

Another article on the subject matter:
DHS Report Says China Lied About Extent of Pandemic in Order to Hoard Medical Supplies