Tag: Alien Tort Statute (ATS)

IBM, Ford not liable for ‘apartheid claims’ – US court

A Manhattan federal judge has dismissed a 12-year-old lawsuit accusing Ford Motor and IBM of encouraging human rights abuses in apartheid-era SA, reluctantly concluding the case does not belong in US courts.

US district judge Shira Scheindlin said last week the black South Africans who brought the case did not show “relevant conduct” by Ford and IBM within the US to justify holding the companies liable.

The plaintiffs had accused Ford, IBM and other companies of having between the 1970s and early 1990s aided SA’s former apartheid government in abuses such as killings and torture, by having made military vehicles and computers for government security forces.

“That these plaintiffs are left without relief in an American court is regrettable,” Scheindlin wrote. “But I am bound to follow [legal precedent], no matter what my personal view of the law may be.”

The case had been brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that lets non-US citizens pursue some cases in US courts over alleged violations of international law.

In April 2013, the US Supreme Court said that law was presumed to cover only violations in the United States, or violations elsewhere that “touch and concern” US territory “with sufficient force”.

Four months later, the federal appeals court in Manhattan applied that holding, and said the Ford and IBM cases should be dismissed altogether.

In April, Scheindlin nonetheless gave the plaintiffs one more chance, to meet the new standards imposed by those higher courts.

But in Thursday’s decision, she said the bar proved too high, and that any alleged international law violations were by Ford’s and IBM’s South African units, and occurred abroad.

“It has been 12 years. We’re really disappointed, devastated by the decision,” said Diane Sammons, a partner at Nagel Rice in Roseland, New Jersey, who represents some plaintiffs.

“The end result of the ruling is that corporations can act abroad with impunity, even if they’re totally controlling the activities of their foreign subsidiaries,” she added. “I don’t think the Supreme Court’s decision was that narrowly defined.”

She said the plaintiffs had not decided whether to appeal.

Jonathan Hacker, an O’Melveny & Myers partner who represents Ford, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Keith Hummel, a Cravath, Swaine & Moore partner who represents IBM, did not immediately respond to similar requests.

Germany’s Daimler and Rheinmetall were dismissed as defendants in December. – Reuters

Court halts US lawsuits against apartheid crime

tortA federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that three major companies cannot be held liable in the United States for crimes South Africa’s former apartheid government committed, saying a recent US Supreme Court decision “plainly bars” such lawsuits.

The plaintiffs brought their suits under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a law passed in 1789 that allowed non-US citizens to bring cases in US federal courts for violations of international law, such as piracy. In recent decades it took on renewed importance, employed to allow non-US citizens to sue for alleged human rights violations abroad.

But a recent Supreme Court decision found that “federal courts may not, under the ATS, recognize common-law causes of action for conduct occurring in the territory of another sovereign,” Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes wrote in the unanimous decision.

In April, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a federal court in New York could not hear claims by 12 Nigerians who accused Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell Plc of complicity in a violent crackdown on protestors in Nigeria from 1992 to 1995. The case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, was seen as a major victory for multinational corporations.

The appeals court ruling on Wednesday could mark the end for plaintiffs in the long-running case, who accused Daimler AG , Ford Motor Company and International Business Machines Corp of facilitating decades of race-based crimes such as torture and extrajudicial killings because their South African subsidiaries sold products to it.

The automakers knew their vehicles were being used by South African forces to violently suppress protesters, while IBM knew its computers were being used to help strip black citizens of their rights, plaintiffs said.

The defendant companies can now request that the case be dismissed in district court, the ruling said. Attorneys for the plaintiffs and representatives of the defendant companies were not immediately available. Apartheid ended in 1994 when South Africa held its first all-race elections, bringing Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress to power.

More than 50 major corporations were initially sued in 2002, but the complaints were later amended to target fewer companies. Supporters of the lawsuits included South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. – Sapa/AP