Looking for some weighty weekend reading? go here for a 102-page opinion handed down nowadays by the Seventh Circuit in which a split panel set aside a $156 million judgment awarded to parents of David Boim, a 17-year-old shot to death in Israel, allegedly by gunmen affiliate with the terrorist organization Hamas. (HT: How Appealing)

In Dec. 2004, federal Justice of the Peace judge Arlander Keys ordered three Islamic charities and a man accused of raising money for Hamas to pay $156 million to the Boims. Judge Keys had tripled the $52 million jury award. The Boims had brought suit under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, which allows any American who is a victim of terrorism abroad to gather damages in United States courts. The Boims are represented by Richard Hoffman of Wildman Harrold.

The Seventh Circuit said that Boim’s parents did not show a link within the contributions and their son’s death, ruling that the trial court erred in granting the plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion and sent the case back down. Here’s the rather dramatic money quote from the majority ruling by Judge Ilana Diamond

Belief, assumption, and speculation are no substitutes for evidence in a court of law. However the plaintiffs might set up a line of proof connecting the defendants with the murder of David Boim, the law demands that they protest such a nexus before any defendant may be held liable for David’s death. We must resist the temptation to gloss by error, confess spurious evidence, and assume facts not adequately proved simply to side with the face of innocence and against the face of terrorism. Our endeavor to adhere to the dictates of law that that great nation has embodied since its founding must persevere, no matter how great our desire to hold someone accountable for the unspeakably evil acts that ended David Boim’s life and created a lifetime of grief not only for the Boims but plus for every other family scarred by terrorism.

Original post by Peter Lattman

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