Former Plainview family among terror cases chosen for first damages trial against Arab Bank

A 2003 terror attack on a Long Island family was one of three cases chosen by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday to be the subject of the first damages trial stemming from a landmark jury verdict finding Jordan's Arab Bank liable for some Mideast violence.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said a June 2003 attack on a road to Jerusalem in which Gene and Lorraine Goldstein of Plainview were wounded and their son killed would be one of the test cases tried, beginning next May. The Goldsteins now live in Florida.

A jury in September found that Arab Bank was liable for 24 attacks on U.S. citizens attributed to Hamas during the intifada from 2000 to 2004 because the bank was willfully blind to financial dealings that aided the terror group. The plaintiffs want triple damages.

Arab Bank has pledged an appeal, and wanted Cogan to let it appeal quickly to get an early test of whether several controversial legal rulings were correct before time and money are spent litigating damages.

Normally, a verdict can't be appealed until after damages are finalized. Cogan said in November that he might start a few damages trials while the appeal was pending, but he has not yet approved an early appeal.

The bank said in a statement, "We hope the Court will be as expeditious in approving the Bank's path to appeal as it has been in ordering a very complex damages proceeding to be completed under an extraordinarily compressed timeframe."