The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California by lawyer Inder Comar , and the lead plaintiff is Sundus Shaker Saleh , an Iraqi expatriate . Plaintiffs alleged that the defendants conspired to wage a war of aggression against the Iraqi people , a violation of the Nuremberg Principles . Plaintiffs specially claimed the primary purpose of the Iraq War was to enact regime change in Iraq , as distinct from national self defense . In pursuit of this goal , the defendants are alleged to have : planned the war as early as 1998 ; capitalized on the September 11 attacks in 2001 to ramp up support for the invasion ; utilized fear tactics and intentional misinformation ; entered Iraq without fully proper UN Security Council authorization . The United States Department of Justice ( DOJ ) represented the defendants , who are all former government officials . The government moved the dismiss the suit , and in December 2014 , the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the suit with prejudice . The court substituted the United States as the sole defendant in place of the individual government officials , citing the Westfall Act , which provides that " the exclusive remedy for torts committed by Government employees in the scope of their employment " in an action against the government itself under the Federal Tort Claims Act . The court noted that the Attorney General had formally certified that the individual defendants " were acting within the scope of their federal employment when performing the acts at issue . " The court then dismissed the lawsuit because the plaintiffs had failed to exhaust administrative remedies as required under the FTCA for claims against the government , a jurisdictional requirement
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Saleh v. Bush