Years ago, I called the pandemic arguably the greatest case of negligence in the history of torts. However, with millions dead and hundreds of billions expended, it was unlikely that China would ever be truly held accountable for its actions. Those failures include not only the alleged release of the virus from the Wuhan lab but also China’s concealment of the release until it had spread globally. A $24 billion judgment was secured in Missouri earlier this year, but China defied the verdict.
Now, it has countersued, naming former Missouri Attorney General and now Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., among others as defendants. Even by the standards of the Chinese legal system, this action is legally absurd. However, in the CCP-controlled court system, the verdict is little in doubt.
China posted a notice of the lawsuit in Wuhan, naming the state of Missouri and Andrew T. Bailey, in addition to Schmitt. Bailey is listed in the notice as the current Missouri Attorney General, but he recently left that job to become the FBI’s co-deputy director.
After international service under the International Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, the defendants are called to appear before the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhan Municipality of Hubei Province, Jianghan District in Wuhan. They are being sued for $356.4 billion Chinese Yuan, or $50.5 billion — just over twice the amount awarded in Missouri.
The complaint demands “public apologies on New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, YouTube and other American media or internet platforms, and People’s Daily, Xinhuanet and other Chinese media or internet platforms…”
The filing is premised on their bringing a successful action against China in United States courts and effectively defaming Wuhan, Chinese officials, and the government generally. I have taught torts for over 30 years and would be hard pressed to come up with a more meritless claim, but law means little in the Chinese court system.
The Missouri action named the Chinese government, various ministries, the Communist Party of China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences as defendants. They were found to have withheld information about the COVID-19 virus, failed to contain the outbreak, and actively hoarded high-quality personal protective equipment (PPE) while producing and selling lower-quality PPE to the rest of the world.
After securing the largest damage award in that state’s history, the current Attorney General filed with the U.S. State Department for diplomatic provided service to China in November 2025. Once service is confirmed, Missouri can return to the district court to obtain certification of compliance with service and seek to seize Chinese-owned assets, including real property, financial interests, and other holdings tied to the defendants.
That is what clearly prompted this tit-for-tat litigation in Wuhan.
The Chinese lawsuit names the defendants as an economic and reputational threat to the People’s Republic of China. It argues that their actions have had “negative effects on the soft power” of Wuhan and have “belittled the social evaluation” as well as adversely affected the “productivity and commercialization of scientific and technological achievements” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It cites the defendants as having engaged in “vexatious litigation” that “defamed Plaintiffs’ reputation, resulting in huge economic losses of the Plaintiffs, and deeply endangering sovereignty, security and development interests of China.”
Obviously, this is not vexatious litigation in any actual legal sense. The Missouri litigation was based on long-established legal precedent, even if the judgment itself against a foreign nation was unprecedented in size.
The notion that these allegations constitute defamation is absurd. First, these allegations are well-established by various countries. China enlisted the World Health Organization (WHO) and others to echo its denials about the virus’s origin. Even after the Biden Administration sought to suppress evidence and views implicating China, federal agencies and experts ultimately refuted those denials.
Even under the more demanding standard that applies to public officials and public figures (known as the “actual malice” standard), China would fall short. There is ample and credible evidence to support these statements, including findings from other countries.
There is also a type of group libel element to the Chinese action.
Such lawsuits are very difficult to maintain. In Neiman-Marcus v. Lait (1952), a New York federal district court addressed a defamation claim arising from the publication of the book “U.S.A. Confidential.” The author wrote that “some” models and “all” saleswomen at the Neiman-Marcus department store in Dallas were “call girls.” It also claimed that “most” of the salesmen in the men’s store were “faggots.” The store had nine models, 382 saleswomen and 25 salesmen. The court found the size of the group of women was too big to satisfy a group libel standard. However, the size of the group of salesmen was viewed as sufficiently small to go to trial.
Here, China is suggesting that not only was the entire Wuhan staff but the entire nation was effectively defamed. That absurd claim was actually tried by a Chinese American group in the United States over Trump’s reference to COVID-19 as Kung Flu. The Chinese American Civil Rights Coalition brought that meritless case, which was quickly dismissed.
China is clearly hoping to engineer a verdict and then somehow use it to counterbalance or negate the Missouri judgment. It will still be tough for Missouri to ever collect on this judgment. However, the verdict was an important effort to secure a judgment on China’s conduct leading to a worldwide pandemic.
One has to assume that the Wuhan court will dutifully render a verdict to counter Missouri. It will do little beyond confirming in the mind of many that China is as nimble at manipulating the legal system as it is at allegedly manipulating spike proteins.
“It will still be tough for Missouri to ever collect on this judgment.” (JT)
Start here: 42,000 acres of China-owned farmland in MO. Then move to here: China-owned Smithfield Foods — with a market cap of some $9 billion.
The Open Air Market Is Just As Logical
Dr Li Wenliang, who lost his life to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, became the face of the threat of SARS-CoV-2 to frontline workers, the clinicians taking care of patients. Li, 34, was an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital. On 30th December, 2019, when the Wuhan municipal health service sent out an alert, he reportedly warned a closed group of ex-medical school classmates on the WeChat social media site of “Seven cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) like illness with links with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market” at his hospital. He was among eight people reprimanded by security officers for “spreading rumours”. In a tragic turn of events, he subsequently contracted SARS-CoV-2 and, after a period in intensive care, died on the morning of Friday 7th February, 2020 (South China Morning Post, 2020).
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30111-9/fulltext
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Original accounts of Dr Li reported that he traced coronavirus to the open air market where bats were sold as exotic food. Scientifically this account made sense because coronavirus is a form of bird flu.
Then, weeks later, western journalists learned that Wuhan has a special lab for creating bio-weapons. Since then, many have assumed coronavirus really came from that lab. But why is that assumption more plausible than the open air market?
The truth is coronavirus could have easily come from either the market or the lab. But original accounts named the market. So why does Johnathan Turley only mention the lab? Is it now incorrect to cite the market? And ‘who’ made that decision?
Should a pandemic break out in this country, our only concern should be the truth. We don’t want ‘X’ number of journalists just making assumptions based on whatever sounds more sinister.
The lab and wet market are not mutually exclusive theories (CCP would like you to be ensnared by a dichotomization trap). The simplest way a lab leak gets into the wet market is via a contaminated lab worker who shops there. Or, animals from the lab were illegally smuggled out and sold there.
The main evidence for a lab leak is the suspicious confiscation of the WIV lab notebooks by CCP officials. No explanation has ever been offered. That reeks of a cover-up (of research that led to the pandemic? that was illegal military bioweapons R&D?).
It’s possible that the wet market was the origin, but that China had to cover up a Bioweapons Treaty violation, and
thus not be able to use the lab notebooks to prove it didn’t start from the lab. Either way, China’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Judge Dugan found guilty on the felony count, not guilty on the misdemeanor count. Soon to be “former judge.”
I am shocked – she was offered a far better deal. I fully expected Jury nullification.
She is a first time offender so the sentence is likely to be lenient.
HOWEVER the testimoney of pretty much everyone in the courtroom that day was VERY bad for her.
Though the many witness did not testify to EXACTlY the same thing – as an example Several Witnesses tessified that Dugan told Ruis and his Public Defender to go out the non-public stair and Dugan specifically noted that if Ruis did NOT go out the non-public stair – he would walk right into the ICE agents. But the Publice defender – who is the person Dugan told this to did not recall Dugan saying that. However the Public Defender testified that she was very concerned and Chose not to go into the hallway with Ruis because she was concerned that She could get into trouble. But other witnesses testified that she did go into the hallway with Ruis.
There was also testimony that Dugans actions were premeditated – that she had been told by the Cheif judge and other that ICE could arrest in Public Hallways. There was a draft policy that said exactly that that was circulated to Dugan and Dugan was on a Zoom about that Policy.
Further Dugan is on video on another case saying she would do anything she court to thwart ICE and take the heat for it.
That will be very problematic for her at Sentencing.
The testimoney was also Weird because virtually everyone from the courthouse that Testiifed was openly hostile to ICE,
At the same time absolutely every one of them testified that they had no part in this, that Diugan did this on her own, that it was unusal that several things Dugan did to evade ICE had never been done before in her court or any other they were aware of.
Essentially everyone of them was being extremely careful NOT to implicate themselves, and to point the finger completely at Dugan.
I still expected jury nullification.
You expect corruption on the part of jurors. I don’t. I say they’ll do their duty as expected under the law. I still believe in my fellow Americans….you don’t. That’s how superpowers die — the lowering of expectations of each other in the minds of the average citizen.
“China’s concealment of the release until it had spread globally”
Before it was notable in the US the stories were already widespread that China was building massive field hospitals and apartment doors being welded shut to contain the occupants.
Since the CCP does everything to keep it all good news, the release of this information was a literal red flag (pun) that this disease was difficult to control and deadly dangerous. What more warning could one need than that a tightly controlled society was, at the government level, not only in full panic, but that that panic was on full display for everyone else on the planet?
What the US got instead was Trump eliminating both Wu Han lab oversight and the White House Pandemic team – both the eyes on the ground and the preparation team that could react quickly, gone.
His gamble that it would be slow enough to avoid an effect on the 2020 election killed a million Americans.
I wanted to TRY to answer your ridiculous statements in a rational manner–but, my reply is simply, you really need help– a lot of help. I feel sorry for you and your deranged statements
You can do better than that, and you know it. You’re just lazy.
China’s concealment was earlier. When they stopped all domestic travel in and out of Wuhan, but allowed international flights to keep leaving for another week, that is all it took. Actually, the virus spread long before that, before it was known to exist outside of China.
My bet is the next one won’t come from China, but instead from Ukraine/Russia or a US lab. Ukraine needs to kill Putin to change the trajectory of the war, and if they fail to kill him with drone strikes, they may use an engineered virus. Then, whether it works or not, it won’t stay in Russia. Or the Democrats could engineer a virus to help them win the Midterms. Either way, we should have a new pandemic soon.
Unless it is intentional – in which case it could come from anywhere – it is coming from China.
The pandemic took off in northern Italy before spreading to the US. That’s because China had moved into the industrial sector there, and several daily flights back and forth.
Anonymous – Trump was denied the oportunity to get it right or wrong.
As I noted in prior comments – Two separate studied of abotu 15000 total blood samples found that C19 was in the US atleast as early as Dec. 19, 2019. By the time China went public that C19 was in Wuhan on Dec 31, 2019 it was already unstopable in the US.
It was already in atleast 9 different states and it has been there for over a month.
There are steps that nations can take to thwart viruses like Convid and we have Stopped two equally or even more dangerous SARS virus’s before they were wide spread. But you MUST react Early and radically – The US would have had to stop All internations Travel likely in mid November – possibly earlier. and/or quarantie travelers for 2 weeks on arival in the US.
And even that would not have worked if the entire world did not take similar steps AND China did not contain and kill off Covid In China.
There is absolutely no measure that any country take take that would have Stopped Covid once it was in a number of countries.
It is one thing to contian a handful of cases in your own country and lockdown Travel for a few months when the outbreak elsewhere is geographically contained – it is not possible to entirely stop it. from getting into Your country – if it has gotten a foothold in the rest of the world.
Even nations like New Zealand and Austrialia where the only way in is by Air or sea and you can quarantine travelrs at the airports.
Still were unable to prevent Covid in the long run.
Didn’t Trump disband the WH Pandemic Preparation Team not knowing SARS-2 would break out later in his term?
Your chronology is wrong, a telltale sign of a made-up conspiracy theory. Some of us can remember the time order of events.
BROWN shooting suspect found dead of self -inflicted gunshot wound.
Kash Patel’s doing such great work.
After Brown botched this – absolutely. It was the FBI that linked the Shooting in Boston,
It was the FBI that identified the suspect in Boston and the FBI that was serving an arrest warrant when the killer shot himself.
TPUSA
__________
Truly
Personifies
United
States of
America
NO prior occupant of the White House was ever so blatantly mentally ill, so consistently lies about nonexistent “accomplishments” and who is consumed with jealousy and resentment than Trump.
Yooo hooo…. is that you, First Felon Bagman Son? Check the boxes for us on your daddy, affectionately nicknamed The Oval Office House Plant (or Bribery Joe for short).
True or False:
1. Claims his political career began with being a young teenage civil rights activist.
2. Claims he was arrested as a young teen for being friendly to new neighbors who were black.
3. Claims he went to a black church as a teen.
4. Claims he was raised Jewish in a Jewish neighborhood.
5. Claims he was raised Puerto Rican in a Puerto Rican neighborhood (but can’t speak Spanish!)
6. Claims he first worked as a coal minor and was from a family of coal miners.
7. Claims he drove a truck for a living for a time.
8. Claims to have turned down an offer from the Naval Academy for free tuition and a chance to play football for Navy beside Roger Staubach.
9. Claims to have graduated from law school on a full pull scholarship. With two degrees. At the top of his class in both.
10. Claims the law school he attended was one of the Historical Historic Black Colleges And Universities
11. Claims your Mommy and a brother were killed by a criminal truck driver driving while impaired.
12. Claims he was arrested while marching for civil rights beside MLK Jr.
13. Claims he was arrested again later as a senator while attempting to meet with Nelson Mandela.
14. Claims he was standing there watching while a Pittsburgh bridge collapsed.
15. Claims that a helicopter he was riding in was forced down right beside Osama bin Ladin’s lair in Afghanistan.
16. Claims he visited Ground Zero on 9/11, helping firefighters working in the still smouldering rubble.
17. Claimed that the Americans he abandoned to die in Benghazi were murdered when Mostly Peaceful Protesters insulted by a video got out of control.
18. Claimed that if you didn’t like Obamacare, you could keep your doctor and your health care plan if you wanted to.
19. Claimed that Obamacare would save the average American $2500 in health costs each year.
20. Claimed that while he could cancel all other President Trump policies like Remain In Mexico, Trump’s Doha Agreement forced him to abandon Americans in Afghanistan.
21. Claims J6 rioters murdered numerous Capitol Police Officers.
22. Claims your brother Beau died in combat in Iraq.
23. Claims that he ended cancer as we know it.
24. Claimed he didn’t know the names of any of your ChiCom and Putin customers.
25. Claimed he never met or spoke with any of your ChiCom and/or Putin customers.
26. Claimed he knew you did nothing wrong.
27. Claimed he would never pardon you.
28. Claims that his presidency cut illegal border crossings by 90%.
29. Claims there wasn’t inflation in his presidency or if there was, it actually went down instead of up.
30. Claims his administration’s inflation isn’t hurting Americans.
How’s that for starters? I have another 200 or so questions, but you can start with that. Or if you wish, we can check Obama’s claims instead – you were snorting coke around the White House for those eight long years.
“We don’t deserve him!”
– Greg Gutfeld
Claimed his uncle was eaten by Cannibals(WWII)!!!
30? Trump gets through more than that before lunch every single day.
So name them.
There’s no winning, only losing.
The court of pandemic contagion is a weapon of mass destruction. Less lethal than any kinetic catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
Correction: The court of pandemic contagion is a weapon of mass destruction. More lethal than any kinetic catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
I would rather fight disagreements through the Courts or Trade than by any kinetic means. Courts and Trade are fungible, whereas kinetics not only destroy, but are also lethal.
I would rather fight disagreements through the Courts or Trade than by any kinetic means.
An individual, a political party or a foreign government always gets a vote on whether or not there will be war. And their vote is the deciding vote.
Those of us in the military only go to work as rough men standing watch at night so you can sleep in peace and security when all the diplomats and courts have failed at their jobs.
Christmas 1967 with my friend M-16 Nam.
Thanks for doing the do GW
Glad you made it home
It’s amazing isn’t it, GW, that people still murder people. It has to be the depths of depravity. Imo