CENTRIFUGAL CASTING MACHINE CO., INC., Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
AMERICAN BANK & TRUST CO., and Banca Nazionale del Lavoro,
Defendant–Appellee,
and
Republic of Iraq, State Machinery Trading Company, Baghdad, Iraq, Central Bank of Iraq, and Bank of Rafidain, Defendants,
United States of America, Intervenor–Appellant.
No. 91–5150.
June 11, 1992.
SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge.
The United States appeals from the judgment entered in one of two consolidated diversity actions involving a letter of credit and a standby letter of credit. The letters were issued in connection with a contract between plaintiff-appellee Centrifugal Casting Machine (CCM) and State Machinery Trading Company (SMTC), an agency of the Iraqi government, under which CCM was to provide cast ductile iron pipe plant equipment to SMTC for a total contract...
As 12/20/2020, Centrifugal Casting appears to be the only published circuit court opinion in history to reject, for there being a lack of adequate blocked person "interest" in the property at issue, the government's authority to block a specifically identified res that was indisputably in the possession or control of a U.S. person at the time OFAC ordered it blocked. (Another case that arguably qualifies is Real v. Simon, 514 F.2d 738 (5th Cir. 1975)).
In this case, OFAC intervened in a litigation between a U.S. goods producer, its blocked Iraqi would-be customer, and banks involved with the letter of credit underlying the export transaction.
OFAC argued that a down payment in a bank account of the U.S. goods producer, that represented a down payment received in connection with an unfulfilled contract and paid pursuant to a...