Republic of the Philippines v. Pimentel (U.S. Supreme Court)

Our client, the Philippine government, sought dismissal of a suit claiming a right to approximately $35 million in assets that Ferdinand Marcos allegedly stole from the Philippines during his time as the country’s president. A class of victims of the Marcos regime claimed the assets to satisfy a judgment they had obtained against Marcos, but our client, the Philippine government, claimed the assets belonged to it and the Philippine people. We represented the Philippine government before the Supreme Court, successfully arguing that after the Philippine government asserted sovereign immunity, Fed. R. Civ. P. 19 required dismissal of the action.