The following report comes to us from Jack Thomas, Country Chair  for the United States - New York:

Judge Frederic Block, of the Eastern District of New York, has just issued a decision in The Boeing Company v EgyptAir, in which he decided to retain jurisdiction over a lawsuit arising from the 1999 crash of an EgyptAir flight off the coast of Nantucket, finding that the case had its roots in the US. Judge Block had to determine whether to keep the case notwithstanding another pending case in Egypt. EgyptAir's insurer had instituted a subrogation action in an Egyptian court, claiming that a known defect in the Boeing manufactured plane caused the crash. Boeing brought a separate action in federal court in New York under the federal Declaratory Judgment Act, in which it argues that EgyptAir and its insurer are contractually barred from recovering damages from Boeing. In deciding to keep the case, Judge Block noted that courts in other federal cases involving the issue of whether to retain jurisdiction over a case in which a parallel foreign proceeding existed had found that the appropriate forum was the forum where the 'underlying dispute had its principal origins and the primary controlling legal issues were to be governed by the substantive law of that forum.' Judge Block found that the foreign suit would largely depend on an interpretation of US law, as it is US law that is the heart of the insurer's subrogation rights. He noted that it was entirely appropriate for Boeing to have brought its action in the US and that the insurer had acknowledged that forum shopping was at the heart of its decision to file in Egypt.