Saudi Arabia v. Nelson, 507 U.S. 349, 25 (1993)

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Cite as: 507 U. S. 349 (1993)

Opinion of Kennedy, J.

orientation session conducted by HCA in Tennessee for new employees. These activities have more than substantial contact with the United States; most of them were "carried on in the United States." 28 U. S. C. § 1605(a)(2). In alleging that the petitioners neglected during these activities to tell him what they were bound to under state law, Nelson meets all of the statutory requirements for invoking federal jurisdiction under the commercial activity exception.

II

Having met the jurisdictional prerequisites of the FSIA, the Nelsons' failure to warn claims should survive petitioners' motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) to dismiss for want of subject-matter jurisdiction. Yet instead of remanding these claims to the District Court for further proceedings, the majority dismisses them in a single short paragraph. This is peculiar, since the Court suggests no reason to question the conclusion that the failure to warn claims are based on commercial activity having substantial contact with the United States; indeed, the Court does not purport to analyze these claims in light of the statutory requirements for jurisdiction.

The Court's summary treatment may stem from doubts about the underlying validity of the negligence cause of action. The Court dismisses the claims because it fears that if it did not, "a plaintiff could recast virtually any claim of intentional tort committed by a sovereign act as a claim of failure to warn, simply by charging the defendant with an obligation to announce its own tortious propensity before indulging it." Ante, at 363. In the majority's view, "[t]o give jurisdictional significance to this feint of language would effectively thwart the Act's manifest purpose to codify the restrictive theory of foreign sovereign immunity." Ibid. These doubts, however, are not relevant to the analytical task at hand.

373

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