## Facts

- Hugo Princz, a U.S. citizen of Jewish origin living in what is now Slovakia during World War II, was arrested with his family and turned over to the Nazi SS after the United States declared war on Germany.
- Despite civilian prisoner exchanges, the SS sent the family to concentration camps; Princz’s parents and sister were killed, and Princz and his brothers were sent to Auschwitz and Birkenau.
- Princz was compelled to perform forced labor, including bricklaying and industrial work related to aircraft production.
- After the war, Germany created reparations and compensation programs, but Princz was repeatedly denied compensation on technical grounds.
- Princz sued the Federal Republic of Germany in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking money damages for injuries and forced labor during his imprisonment.

## Issues

1. Whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) applies to conduct occurring during 1942–1945.
2. If the FSIA applies, whether any exception to immunity—commercial activity, waiver, or treaty-based—permits jurisdiction over Princz’s claims.
3. If the FSIA does not apply, whether pre-FSIA absolute sovereign immunity bars the suit for lack of federal subject-matter jurisdiction.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit reversed the district court and ordered dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
- The court declined to decide definitively whether the FSIA applies retroactively, holding that dismissal was required under either approach.
- Assuming the FSIA applies, the court held that no pleaded FSIA exception defeated Germany’s immunity.
- If the FSIA does not apply, the court held that pre-FSIA absolute sovereign immunity likewise left the federal courts without jurisdiction over the tort and quasi-contract claims.
- A dissent would have construed FSIA exceptions more broadly to allow the suit to proceed.

## Legal Principles

- Under the FSIA, foreign states are presumptively immune from suit in U.S. courts unless a statutory exception applies, and immunity questions are reviewed as matters of law.
- The FSIA commercial-activity exception requires a “direct effect in the United States”; attenuated or temporally remote consequences in the United States do not satisfy this requirement.
- Later use of U.S. mail, wire, or banking channels in administering reparations programs, occurring years after the alleged wrongful conduct, does not constitute an “immediate consequence” of the underlying acts for purposes of the direct-effect requirement.
- Violations of *jus cogens* norms, standing alone, do not constitute an implied waiver of sovereign immunity under the FSIA waiver exception.
- A treaty-based route around immunity requires an express and substantive treaty provision that creates the relevant obligation or waiver; general post-war agreements and reparations instruments that do not expressly provide compensation to the plaintiff or waive immunity in U.S. courts do not suffice.
- If the FSIA is inapplicable to pre-1976 conduct, pre-FSIA absolute sovereign immunity bars federal jurisdiction absent a recognized basis to hale the foreign sovereign into U.S. court.

## Conclusion

The court held that U.S. courts lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over Princz’s claims against Germany because sovereign immunity applied and no FSIA exception—commercial activity, waiver, or treaty-based—reached Nazi-era enslavement and related injuries; alternatively, absolute sovereign immunity would bar the suit if the FSIA did not govern.


Princz v. Fed. Republic of Ger., 26 F.3d 1166 (D.C. Cir. 1994)