Judge Barrington Parker
Naturalized citizen Porter's brother was killed on Pan Am flight 103 by Libyan terrorists in 1988. If able to prove derivative citizenship based on his mother's U.S. citizenship, Porter could be entitled to compensation from a fund established by Libya and the United States. Porter's argument for such derivative citizenship rested largely on his assertion that his mother stayed in the United States for more than a year after her birth before she moved to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. District court found statements that his mother was born in the United States and left after her first birthday to be inadmissible hearsay not within the family history exception. Affirming district court, Second Circuit held that court's determination not an abuse of discretion. The affidavit by Porter's mother inadequately explained how the precise date of her relocation was so significant, interesting or unusual that it became a subject of presumptively accurate family lore. District court was properly skeptical that generalized discussions of family history would include statements of age so precise as to foreclose the possibility that Porter's mother was 11 months old when she relocated but allow the possibility that she was 13 months old at that time.
