Hubei Hires White and Case to Vacate Missouri’s $24.5 Billion Default Judgment Over Alleged COVID PPE Hoarding

Five Years of Silence, Then a New York Letterhead

China treated the Missouri courtroom as optional from April 2020 until August 31, 2026. Then Hubei province and the Chinese Academy of Sciences hired White & Case. Reuters reported that the New York-founded firm, more than 2,500 lawyers deep, filed in federal court in Missouri to vacate a $24.5 billion default judgment and dismiss the case. The partner on the papers is Christopher Curran in Washington, a litigator who has represented foreign governments in American courts before. The number on Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr.’s March 2025 order is $24,488,825,457 plus post-judgment interest.

The defendants named in the original caption include the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party of China, Hubei and Wuhan governments, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. None of them filed an answer before the default. The new motion says the district judge has no power over them, that the award intrudes on foreign affairs, and that Missouri offered no proof any defendant broke a contract to ship personal protective equipment to the United States.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office answered the same day. «China is several years too late,» a spokesperson said. «Missouri will defend its judgment, which has been upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. We will continue to hold China accountable for the suffering it inflicted on Missourians during the COVID-19 pandemic.»

How a Kitchen-Sink Lawsuit Became a Single Commercial Claim

Then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the case on April 21, 2020, with four theories and nine Chinese defendants. Most of that complaint died. The Eighth Circuit wiped the public-health and cover-up counts on sovereign-immunity grounds and left one path standing: an antitrust-style claim that Chinese entities hoarded masks, gowns, and gloves while the rest of the market was still buying the official line on human-to-human spread. That sliver fits the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s commercial-activity exception. It is the only reason a U.S. district judge in the Eastern District of Missouri still has a live file.

Limbaugh’s 32-page default order found about $8.04 billion in lost Missouri tax revenue through 2051 and another $122.9 million in extra PPE spending. Federal and state antitrust statutes let him triple the total. He wrote that the pattern suggested officials knew about human-to-human spread as early as September 2019 and held the news long enough to vacuum up product. Those are findings entered against empty chairs. White & Case’s first job is to stand those chairs up and call the findings incompetent.

Andrew Bailey, who inherited the case after Schmitt left for the Senate, promised to collect by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland. Bailey later left for the FBI. Hanaway took the office in September 2025 and in November mailed judgment packets toward diplomatic service. Mississippi picked up a similar default of about $25 billion in May 2025. Copycat captions do not make execution easier.

Wuhan Filed First. White and Case Filed Where the Money Is.

The Chinese embassy called Limbaugh’s order an attack on sovereignty. In April 2025, Wuhan’s city government, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology sued Missouri in Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court, asking for apologies and about $51 billion. That filing was theater with a docket number. A judgment in Wuhan does not move a tractor in Audrain County.

Hiring Curran is the first move that could. Default judgments against foreign sovereigns look enormous until someone shows up with a motion to vacate. The live arguments are familiar to every FSIA desk: service on a sovereign, whether commercial-activity jurisdiction was correctly applied, and whether execution immunity still blocks the farmland seizures politicians keep advertising. The statute talks about property that belongs to a named defendant and was used in the commercial activity that produced the claim. That is a thin target. A provincial agriculture fund parked in Missouri is not automatically a crate of N95s.

The AEGIS Alliance has watched other headline numbers collide with collection reality, including Citigroup’s $81 trillion near-miss. A wire that large can be unwound in a day. A sovereign default cannot. Hanaway can mail packets. She cannot print a lien on the PBOC.

What a Vacatur Fight Actually Tests

White & Case will argue that a default against a foreign government entered after years of nonappearance is not a finding of fact. It is a penalty for ignoring the clerk. They will also argue that mask purchases by Chinese agencies were sovereign public-health acts, not commercial hoarding, and that the Eighth Circuit’s remaining sliver was never meant to carry a $24 billion treble award built on a tax-revenue model that runs to 2051. Missouri will answer that the defendants were served, that they chose silence, and that the commercial exception exists precisely so a state can sue when a foreign instrumentality enters a market and distorts it.

Both sides have a political audience. Missouri voters were promised a historic collection. Beijing cannot accept a U.S. district judge pricing the early pandemic. The court does not answer to either audience. It answers to the FSIA and to whether Limbaugh abused his discretion when he treated empty-chair damages as proven.

Collection remains the unglamorous half. Even if Hanaway beats the motion, she still has to find attachable commercial property. Farmland titled to a Chinese investor is not the same as farmland titled to the People’s Government of Hubei Province. Banks, aircraft lessors, and port operators will lawyer every levy. Mississippi’s parallel default does not help; it multiplies the defendants’ incentive to fight in the first forum that looks movable.

A Judgment Is Not a Check

Hubei hiring White & Case does not mean Missouri loses. It means the silent-default phase is over. The case that began as a 2020 press conference is now a 2026 law-firm matter with a partner who knows how sovereigns stall. Limbaugh’s number will either shrink, vanish, or sit on the books as an uncollectable monument. The AEGIS Alliance will treat the monument as news only when a marshal actually tags an asset.

Until then, the accurate sentence is the boring one. A federal judge in Missouri entered a default. A Chinese province retained counsel. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, not a campaign speech, will decide whether $24.5 billion is a verdict or a press release.