Federal court awards $300 million in punitive damages against Iran for general's assassination

07/28/12: The Blog of Legal Times reports a federal judge awarded $300 million in punitive damages Wednesday to the grandson of an Iranian general assassinated in Paris in 1984.  Amir Reza Oveissi, who lives in the United States, sued the Iranian government in 2003 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing officials of orchestrating General Gholam Ali Oveissi’s death.  He won a judgment of $7.5 million in compensatory damages in 2011, and then sued for punitive damages under the state-sponsored terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.  Chief Judge Royce Lamberth issued an order yesterday awarding Oveissi $300 million in punitive damages, concluding in his opinion that “defendant Iran must be punished to the fullest extent legally possible for the violent assassination of plaintiff’s [grand]father.”