A $300 'red herring' failed to sway a Manhattan federal judge last week.
counsel at Latham & Watkins, the banks argued that the family’s early discovery actually showed the weakness of the Schansmans’ jurisdictional case.
“Plaintiffs’ identification of only two mechanical transfers totaling $300 through Sberbank correspondent accounts,” Debevoise wrote in Sberbank’s dismissal motion, “is too inconsequential to support personal jurisdiction over Sberbank in New York.”opposing the banks' dismissal motions. Those two transactions, Jenner argued, were merely what plaintiffs' lawyers were able to document from incomplete records produced from just two of the U.S. banks where Sberbank and VTB held accounts.
In last week’s decision, Carter agreed. ATA plaintiffs, he said, do not have to allege details about individual transfers to establish the personal jurisdiction of New York courts. Plaintiffs must simply show that defendants repeatedly and deliberately used New York’s banking system to transfer funds that allegedly supported terror operations. The Schansmans, Carter said, met that test by alleging that the Russian supremacist group instructed donors to send money through the Russian banks’ U.S.