The Court will consider three questions under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s (FSIA) expropriation exception: (1) whether historical commingling of assets suffices to establish that proceeds of seized property have the required commercial nexus with the United States; (2) whether a plaintiff must make out a valid claim that an exception to the FSIA applies at the pleading stage, rather than merely raising a plausible inference; and (3) whether a sovereign defendant bears the burden of producing evidence to disprove that the proceeds of expropriated property have a commercial nexus with the United States.

The plaintiffs are Holocaust survivors who allege that Hungary expropriated their property, commingled the proceeds with other government funds, and ultimately used those funds to pay holders of government bonds in the United States. The D.C. Circuit held that commingling was sufficient, that the plaintiffs needed only to raise a plausible inference that the exception applies, and that it was Hungary’s burden to prove that the funds it used to pay bondholders in the United States could not be traced to the proceeds of expropriated property.