Cite as: 507 U. S. 349 (1993)
White, J., concurring in judgment
At the heart of the majority's conclusion, in other words, is the fact that the hospital in this case chose to call in government security forces. See ante, at 362. I find this fixation on the intervention of police officers, and the ensuing characterization of the conduct as "peculiarly sovereign in nature," ante, at 361, to be misguided. To begin, it fails to capture respondents' complaint in full. Far from being directed solely at the activities of the Saudi police, it alleges that agents of the hospital summoned Nelson to its security office because he reported safety concerns and that the hospital played a part in the subsequent beating and imprisonment. App. 5, 14. Without more, that type of behavior hardly qualifies as sovereign. Thus, even assuming for the sake of argument that the role of the official police somehow affected the nature of petitioners' conduct, the claim cannot be said to "res[t] entirely upon activities sovereign in character." See ante, at 358, n. 4. At the very least it "consists of both commercial and sovereign elements," thereby presenting the specific question the majority chooses to elude. See ibid. The majority's single-minded focus on the exercise of police power, while certainly simplifying the case, thus hardly does it justice.3
3 In contrast, the cases cited by the majority involve action that did not take place in a commercial context and that could be considered purely sovereign. For instance, in Arango v. Guzman Travel Advisors Corp., 621 F. 2d 1371 (CA5 1980), plaintiffs were expelled from the Dominican Republic pursuant to a decision by immigration officials that they were " 'undesirable aliens.' " Id., at 1373. As the Court of Appeals reasoned, the airline's actions "were not commercial. [It] was impressed into service to perform these functions . . . by Dominican immigration officials pursuant to that country's laws." Id., at 1379. Nor was there a hint of commercial activity in Herbage v. Meese, 747 F. Supp. 60 (DC 1990), affirmance order, 292 U. S. App. D. C. 84, 946 F. 2d 1564 (1991), an extradition case that did not so much as mention the commercial activity exception.
Absence of a commercial context also distinguishes those incidents relied on by the majority that predate passage of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. See ante, at 362, n. 5. Yet the majority gives short shrift to an occurrence that most closely resembles the instant case and
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