Bomb blast victims hope for $4.3bn award by US top court

Attorneys representing hundreds of Kenyan and Tanzanian victims of the 1998 embassy bombings are optimistic that the US Supreme Court will rule in the coming months to award a total of $4.3 billion to their clients.

The highest court in the United States agreed last month to take up this case during its term beginning in October. A ruling on whether the multi-billion dollar payment must be made to the Kenyans and Tanzanians by the government of Sudan will be handed down sometime prior to June, next year.

At issue is a lower US court's rejection in 2017 of the claim by certain bombing victims and family members that they are entitled to $4.3 billion in punitive damages from Sudan. US courts have already agreed that Sudan is liable for a separate and additional $5.9 billion in compensatory damage payments to some of the Kenyans and Tanzanians harmed in the US embassy attacks.

“If there was ever a case where punitive damages should be upheld, it is this one,” William Wheeler, a US attorney involved in the lawsuit, said on Tuesday.

The lower court's ruling against payment of punitive damages reflected its view that a 2008 change in US law allowing for such payments could not be applied retroactively to the embassy bombings that had occurred 10 years earlier.

Under US law, compensatory damages are meant to compensate victims for their losses. Punitive damages serve as punishments levied against parties responsible for causing the losses.

A group of 570 individuals are plaintiffs in the case.