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How the Totals Are Built

Court filings as of October 17, 2026.

A judge's gavel coming down on its sounding block
Every total on this site is an amount a judge stated in a written opinion. Photo: ESB Professional/Shutterstock

Scope

Court opinions filed since January 1, 2015, in civil terrorism cases under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act terrorism exception (28 U.S.C. 1605A) and the Anti-Terrorism Act (18 U.S.C. 2333), in which a U.S. court awards money damages against Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Palestinian Authority and PLO. Agencies of a state, such as Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are included under that state. The public list shows 103 damages opinions.

How a Figure Gets In

  1. Opinions are found through the CourtListener search API and read in full text.
  2. A language model proposes the compensatory, punitive and total award, each with the sentence that states it.
  3. A figure is published only when that sentence appears word for word in the opinion and the figure appears in that sentence. The model never adds numbers; where an opinion states compensatory and punitive awards but no total, the two stated figures are added and the page says so.
  4. Totals sum confirmed totals only. Where an opinion gives awards plaintiff by plaintiff with no aggregate, the page shows Per plaintiff, no aggregate. Where a proposed total did not match the opinion text word for word, it shows Total not confirmed until a second check confirms it.
  5. Totals sum damages awards. Magistrate judges' reports and recommendations, liability-only rulings and dismissals appear on the researcher tier with their type.
  6. One docket is one court and docket number; CourtListener sometimes files one docket under several entries, and these are joined, as are dockets the opinion's caption lists together (consolidated cases). On each docket the latest award opinion with a confirmed total is the one used, because amended opinions and later opinions restate earlier awards. An award opinion checked by hand as covering plaintiffs that the earlier award did not cover is used as well.
  7. Defendants are the states and organisations named in the caption or the extracted parties, less any whose claims the opinion says were dismissed with no judgment entered against them.

Totals

Totals by defendant are summed from the rows in the list at build time. A judgment entered jointly against two defendants appears under each; the all-defendant figure includes it once. Figures are nominal U.S. dollars as stated, without later interest.

Collection

Collection is reported only where a court filing documents it. A docket with a satisfaction of judgment in CourtListener's RECAP archive links that filing; every other judgment shows Satisfaction not on docket with the date of the RECAP search. The search covers every result, and the satisfaction filings it finds on other terrorism dockets show that it finds such filings at all. RECAP holds only filings that users have retrieved from PACER, so a missing satisfaction is not proof of non-payment. U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund payments are published by the Fund in aggregate and are not matched to individual judgments.

People

Victims and their families are private persons. Each judgment page shows the caption as filed on the opinion and no other plaintiff detail. Where CourtListener's case name differs from the opinion's own caption, the opinion's caption is used; an entry whose caption cannot be matched to the opinion is held back for review. Defendants shown are states and organisations; each judgment page gives the number of other named defendants.

Sources and Fetch Dates

Corrections

Write to info@meforum.org with the docket number. Corrections are noted on this page.