On Monday, Aug. 31, the People’s Government of Hubei Province and the Chinese Academy of Sciences retained White & Case, a U.S.-founded global law firm, and asked a federal judge in Missouri to set aside the default judgment and dismiss the case.
Missouri filed suit in April 2020 against the Chinese central government, the Hubei provincial government, and other Chinese defendants, alleging concealment and official failure at the start of the outbreak and the stockpiling of PPE that left the United States short of supplies. In 2021 a federal district court dismissed the case under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Missouri recast its theory, alleging that the Chinese Communist Party leadership knew by September 2019 that the virus existed and was spreading between people.
In 2024 a federal appeals court revived part of the suit. The Chinese defendants did not appear. In March 2025, U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. entered a default judgment. The court first awarded about $8 billion in compensatory damages, later increased under applicable law to about $24.5 billion. Missouri then said it would seek to collect by targeting Chinese-owned assets in the United States, including farmland.
In Monday’s filing, Hubei and the Chinese Academy of Sciences challenged the district judge’s authority and called the default an improper intrusion into foreign affairs. Those claims are the defendants’ own assertions and have not been tested or adopted by the court.
A spokesman for the Missouri attorney general’s office said the same day that China’s challenge is “several years too late” and that the state will continue to pursue losses and responsibility inflicted on Missouri during the pandemic.
The shift from a paper award to enforcement, experts say, is the point at which the case changed character.
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