WASHINGTON —
On the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a federal judge in Missouri ruled that the Chinese government should be held accountable for covering up the truth and hoarding protective materials in the early stages of the pandemic, and that it should pay Missouri more than $24 billion in compensation. China said that it “will never accept the so-called ‘default judgment'” and reserves the right to take reciprocal countermeasures. The Attorney General of Missouri vowed to seek compensation, and if China refuses to pay compensation, Missouri will seize Chinese assets in the United States. How do American legal experts view this ruling?
Missouri wins
Five years after the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a global pandemic, federal judge Stephen Limbaug in Missouri, located in the central United States, ruled on March 7 on a case in which Missouri sued China for compensation for losses caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The case was heard in the United States Eastern District Court of Missouri on January 27 this year.
“The Court finds that the State of Missouri has presented evidence satisfactory to the Court to establish the liability of each defendant to the State for Count Four of Plaintiff’s Complaint,” Limbaugh said in his ruling. “Accordingly, the Court hereby orders the defendants to pay damages jointly and severally in the amount of $24,488,825,457.00, plus postjudgment interest.”
He believes that China and relevant institutions have an unshirkable responsibility for concealing their knowledge of the new coronavirus in the early stages of the pandemic and taking advantage of the time difference to stockpile protective equipment.
Defendants in this lawsuit include the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party of China, the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Government of Hubei Province, the People’s Government of Wuhan City, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Since China did not send any representatives to attend the trial, the judge made a judgment in absentia, bringing an end to the five-year case.
State Attorneys General: Historic Victory
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey called the ruling a historic victory.
“This is a landmark victory for Missouri and the United States in the fight to hold China accountable for unleashing the coronavirus on the world,” Bailey said in a statement .
“China’s refusal to appear in court does not mean they can get away with inflicting untold suffering and economic devastation. We intend to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland,” he said.
His office has said it may work with the Trump administration to help identify and seize Chinese assets.
“We look forward to working with the court and federal and state partners to identify assets to seize if the Chinese Communist Party chooses not to pay,” the office said in a statement to VOA. “These assets do not need to be located within Missouri and can be located anywhere in the United States. We intend to collect on this judgment and look forward to that process. While we have not yet worked with other states on this litigation, we encourage other states to work to hold the Chinese government accountable and seek justice for victims.”
China does not accept the ruling and may take countermeasures
Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the United States, said in a statement to VOA on March 11 that China “will never accept the so-called ‘in absentia judgment’.”
“Based on the principle of sovereign equality under international law, the COVID-19 response measures taken by Chinese governments at all levels constitute sovereign acts and are not subject to the jurisdiction of US courts. The so-called lawsuits by some people in the United States deny basic facts and violate basic legal principles. Such baseless lawsuits are nothing but political manipulation with ulterior motives,” the spokesperson said.
In his statement, Liu Pengyu defended the Chinese government’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
He said: “In the process of responding to the new crown pandemic, the Chinese government has always put people’s lives first. We have worked hand in hand with countries around the world to overcome difficulties and made important contributions to international cooperation in fighting the epidemic. China’s record of responding to the COVID-19 epidemic is obvious to all, with a clear timeline and solid facts. It has been widely recognized by the international community and cannot be smeared or distorted.”
The spokesperson further said that launching meaningless lawsuits to discredit China and use China as a scapegoat will not achieve any results.
He said that in response to the so-called “ruling” of this lawsuit, China reserves the right to take reciprocal countermeasures in accordance with international law to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.
Missouri filed a lawsuit as early as 2020
Missouri first sued China in April 2020, becoming the first state in the United States to file a legal action over China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It accused Beijing of an “appalling campaign of deception, concealment, malfeasance, and inaction,” saying that these actions caused the virus. However, a federal district court judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2021, citing the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. After the lawsuit was dismissed, the state changed the focus of the lawsuit to the fact that Chinese leaders knew about the existence and human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus as early as September 2019. The World Health Organization did not know about this until December 2019. China took advantage of this time difference to produce, purchase, import, export, and hoard medical equipment, especially medical equipment for preventing the new coronavirus, which caused an immediate shortage of masks and enabled China to sell inferior masks to the market. Due to China’s unilateral actions, Missourians paid higher prices to purchase masks, making it difficult to safely and effectively treat those infected with the virus.
Evidence presented by prosecutors included an alleged statement from a Chinese professor at Wuhan University who said he knew a COVID-19 patient in September 2019, and a U.S. State Department report saying it had “reason to believe” that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology experienced COVID-19-like symptoms in the fall of 2019. Around this time, the lawsuit says, Hubei province began buying more pathogen detection equipment.
The lawsuit alleges that China has taken control of U.S. factories in China, including those owned by 3M and General Motors, and blocked the export of equipment to the United States to hoard and monopolize personal protective equipment such as masks and medical devices.
Attorney General Bailey said trade data showed that in January and February 2020, China imported more than 16 times the usual amount of medical masks from the United States alone.
More than 21,000 Missouri residents died from COVID-19-related complications between 2020 and 2022, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
Experts pessimistic about enforcement of the ruling
Although Missouri has said it will enforce the ruling, some American legal experts interviewed by VOA have different views on the case.
Aaron Lukken is an attorney at Viking Advocates in Missouri who specializes in cross-border litigation. He believes there are some loopholes in this case, including that the subpoena was presented to the defendant Chinese institution through electronic channels.
Lukken told VOA: “My understanding of this latest ruling, especially against the Wuhan Institute of Virology and several other local institutions far away (China), is that the court approved the service of [subpoenas] to these institutions via email. Email is not a valid method of service within the scope of the Hague Service Convention or the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.”
He believes that this provides the defendant local institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with sufficient grounds for appeal.
The Hague Service Convention, formally known as the Hague Convention on the International Service of Judicial and Extra-judicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, is an international treaty established in 1965. The convention provides a standardized procedure for serving legal documents across national borders, ensuring that parties involved in legal proceedings are able to properly notify foreign individuals or entities of matters relating to the legal proceedings.
Attorney Luken also believes that there are some very serious jurisdictional issues in this case.
“There is a very big and looming question here about whether Missouri courts or Missouri federal courts have jurisdiction over the People’s Republic of China or a political subdivision or local government of the People’s Republic of China,” he said. “Whether a foreign government can be sued in the courts of another country is a historic question.”
Even if China does not appeal, Luken doubts whether Missouri can enforce against the defendant’s property in the United States.
“I don’t know what property the Wuhan Institute of Virology has here,” he said.
Duncan Levin, a former federal and New York prosecutor, also told the Associated Press that it is unclear whether the owner of the assets in Missouri is the Chinese government or other defendants in the lawsuit, or a Chinese individual or company. He doubts that Bailey has the right to seize assets outside of Missouri. In his opinion, even making a request to seize assets will take a long time.
“Good luck with that!” he said.
In early February, VOA asked the Missouri Governor’s Office and the state’s Department of Economic Development how much assets China owns in the state. It also asked the state attorney general how it arrived at the compensation amount of more than $24 billion, but received no response.
According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, by the end of 2023, Chinese interest groups owned about 44,000 acres of farmland in Missouri, one thousandth of the state’s 44 million acres.
Chimène Keitner, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, is an authority on international law and civil litigation and served as the 27th International Law Counselor of the U.S. State Department. She also said in an interview with VOA that there are challenges in enforcing this ruling.
“The only assets that can be seized and executed are those that are located in the United States and ‘used in business activities related to the claims in the litigation.’ Therefore, there is no basis for seizing Chinese-owned assets unless they are related to claims for stockpiling of protective equipment,” she said.
The law professor also noted that the damages award in this case included treble damages, and that foreign countries are generally immune from punitive damages.
“I’m not sure if the judge in this case considered that limitation,” Ketner said. “I would imagine that if Missouri tried to enforce the judgment against any assets, China would hire lawyers to fight the enforcement on the grounds that it didn’t meet those standards.”
More symbolism than substance?
Both legal experts, who are skeptical that Missouri can actually enforce the ruling, said the case could end up being more of a symbolic gesture.
“This is a symbolic effort to hold China accountable for what it did or did not do before the global pandemic,” said attorney Luken,
who added that as a Missouri taxpayer he was “opposed to devoting significant public resources to a lawsuit that is arguably unenforceable.”
As for possible countermeasures China could take, both legal experts agreed that it could involve China seizing U.S. property in China or preventing U.S. investment in China.