Eastern District Judge Nina Gershon (See Profile) has ordered Arab Bank to pay $1.3 million for "failure to comply with its discovery obligations" in a lawsuit where victims of terrorist attacks in Israel and their families are seeking to hold the bank liable for its purported facilitation of the attacks. After the judge awarded "a variety of sanctions" against the bank in July 2010 for instances of discovery noncompliance, she determined legal fees and expenses for the plaintiffs in an order filed on Monday in Linde v. Arab Bank, 04-cv-2799. Gershon noted plaintiffs' attorneys "spent massive amounts of time and money" to depose bank witnesses in Jordan. The witnesses, however, were told by their counsel not to answer questions on foreign bank secrecy grounds that had been rejected by Gershon and Magistrate Judge Viktor Pohorelsky (See Profile).
The bank argued the witnesses answered numerous questions and only a small number went unanswered. But Gershon said the bank's "percentage-of-questions analysis" does not tell the whole story. "In light of the potential significance of the account information, and the fact that, had the witnesses been allowed to answer by the Bank's counsel, there undoubtedly would have been substantial follow-up," she said, adding that plaintiffs' counsel prepared for depositions on issues that witnesses did not address.
