Alien Tort Statute
Encyclopedia
The Alien Tort Statute is a section of the United States Code
that reads: "The district courts
shall have original jurisdiction
of any civil action by an alien
for a tort
only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." This statute is notable for allowing United States courts to hear human rights
cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States.
. There is little surviving legislative history
regarding the Act, and its original meaning and purpose are uncertain. However, scholars have surmised that the Act was intended to assure foreign governments that the United States would act to prevent and provide remedies for breaches of customary international law, especially breaches concerning diplomats and merchants.
The ATS may have been enacted in response to a number of international incidents caused by the non-availability of remedies for foreign citizens in the United States. For example, the peace treaty ending the American Revolution
provided for the satisfaction of debts to British creditors. The refusal of some states to enforce the payment of such debts prompted Great Britain to threaten to retaliate. In 1784, French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois
was assaulted, but no remedy was available to him. The incident was notorious internationally and prompted Congress to draft a resolution asking the states to allow suits in tort for the violation of the law of nations. However, few states enacted such a provision, and Congress subsequently included the ATS in the Judiciary Act of 1789.
From 1789 until 1980, only two courts based jurisdiction on the ATS.
decided Filartiga v. Pena-Irala
, which "paved the way for a new conceptualization of the ATS." In Filartiga, two Paraguayan citizens resident in the United States, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights
, brought suit against a Paraguyan former police chief who was also living in the United States. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant had tortured and murdered a member of their family, and they asserted that U.S. federal courts had jurisdiction over their suit under the ATS. The district court dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction
, holding that the "law of nations" does not regulate a state's treatment of its own citizens.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
reversed. First, the Second Circuit held that the ATS, which allowed jurisdiction in the federal courts over a suit between two aliens, was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power, because "the law of nations...has always been part of the federal common law," and thus the statute fell within federal-question jurisdiction. Second, the court held that the contemporary law of nations had expanded to prohibit state-sanctioned torture. The court found that multilateral treaties and domestic prohibitions on torture evidenced a consistent state practice of proscribing official torture. The court similarly found that United Nations declarations such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights manifested an expectation of adherence to the prohibition of official torture. The court therefore held that the right to be free from torture had become a principle of customary international law. However, one of the judges on the panel hearing the case later wrote that Filartiga "should not be misread or exaggerated to support sweeping assertions that all (or even most) international human rights norms found in the Universal Declaration or in international human rights treaties have ripened into customary international law enforceable in the domestic courts."
Since Filartiga, jurisdiction under the ATS has been upheld in dozens of cases.
. The plaintiff in Sosa, Alvarez, brought a claim under the ATS for arbitrary arrest and detention. Alvarez had been indicted in the United States for torturing and murdering a Drug Enforcement Agency officer. When the United States was unable to secure Alvarez's extradition, it paid Sosa, a Mexican national, to kidnap Alvarez and bring him into the United States. Alvarez claimed that his "arrest" by Sosa was arbitrary because the warrant for his arrest only authorized his arrest within the United States. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
held that Alvarez's abduction constituted arbitrary arrest in violation of international law.
The Supreme Court reversed. The Supreme Court Court clarified that the ATS did not create a cause of action, but instead merely "furnish[ed] jurisdiction for a relatively modest set of actions alleging violations of the law of nations." Such actions must "rest on a norm of international character accepted by the civilized world and defined with a specificity comparable to the features of the 18th-century paradigms we have recognized." Although the scope of the ATS is not limited to violations of international law recognized in the 18th century, with respect to recognizing contemporary international norms, the Court's opinion stated that "the judicial power should be exercised on the understanding that the door is still ajar subject to vigilant doorkeeping."
In Alvarez's case, "a single illegal detention of less than a day, followed by the transfer of custody to lawful authorities and a prompt arraignment, violates no norm of customary international law so well defined as to support the creation of a federal remedy."
; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; genocide
; war crimes; crimes against humanity; summary execution; prolonged arbitrary detention; and forced disappearance
to be actionable under the ATS.
Since Sosa, courts have struggled to define the level of specificity required for a norm to be actionable under the ATS. For example, subsequent to Sosa, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
overturned prior lower court decisions that had found cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment actionable, noting that Sosa repudiated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a source of law under the ATS. Similarly, courts have held that economic, social, and cultural rights are too indeterminate to satisfy Sosas specificity requirement. For example, in Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corp., the Second Circuit stated that the rights to life and to health are too indeterminate to constitute a cause of action under the ATS.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California
, however, has held that the limits of a norm need not be defined with particularity to be actionable; rather, the norm need only be so defined that the particular acts upon which a claim is based certainly fall within the bounds of the norm. In Doe v. Qi, the court stated, "The fact that there may be doubt at the margins -- a fact that inheres in any definition -- does not negate the essence and application of that definition in clear cases." The court also described how to determine whether specific actions fall within the proscriptions of an international norm, holding that the actions alleged should be compared with actions that international adjudicatory bodies have found to be proscribed by the norm in question. It therefore examined decisions by institutions such as the Human Rights Committee
, the European Court of Human Rights
, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
to determine that pushing, hitting, and choking a plaintiff during one day of incarceration did not constitute cruel, unusual, or degrading treatment, whereas forcing a hand into a plaintiff's vagina did constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
regarding whether corporations, as opposed to natural people, could be held liable under the ATS. In 2010 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. that "customary international law has steadfastly rejected the notion of corporate liability for international crimes" and thus that "insofar as plaintiffs bring claims under the ATS against corporations, plaintiffs fail to allege violations of the law of nations, and plaintiffs' claims fall outside the limited jurisdiction provided by the ATS." However, in 2011, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals all ruled that corporate liability is possible under the Alien Tort Statute. On October 17, 2011, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would hear an appeal in Kiobel during its 2011–2012 term.
In a 2-1 decision issued on September 17, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that corporations cannot be held liable for violations of customary international law, finding that: (1) under both U.S. Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedents over the previous 30 years that address ATS suits alleging violations of customary international law, the scope of liability is determined by customary international law itself; (2) under Supreme Court precedent, the ATS requires courts to apply norms of international law—and not domestic law—to the scope of defendants’ liabilities. Such norms must be “specific, universal and obligatory"; and (3) under international law, “corporate liability is not a discernible—much less a universally recognized—norm of customary international law,” that the court could apply to the ATS, and that the plaintiffs’ ATS claims should indeed be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Kiobel petitioned the Supreme Court for review of the Second Circuit's decision, which was granted on October 17, 2011. The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case by the end of June, 2012.
.
In 2006, U.S. officials arrested Taylor Jr. upon entering the United States (via the Miami International Airport) and the Department of Justice later charged him based on torture he committed in Liberia. He was convicted of multiple counts of torture and conspiracy to torture and was sentenced to 97 years in prison. The World Organization for Human Rights USA and the Florida International University College of Law
filed a civil suit in the Southern District of Florida on behalf of five of Taylor Jr.’s victims pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act. The plaintiffs won by default judgment on all counts, and in February 2010, the court found Taylor liable to the plaintiffs for damages of over $22 million.
decision http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1015.pdf in addressing the adequacy of the complaint, which has must have "facial plausibility" to survive dismissal, and noted that Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure demands "more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." The Eleventh Circuit then applied the Iqbal standard to plaintiffs' allegations against Coca-Cola and held that they were insufficient to survive dismissal.
, the Public Interest Lawyers Group, and EarthRights International, brought claims for wrongful death, torture, assault, battery, and negligence against Chevron, alleging that the company had paid the soldiers that landed on the platform and were therefore liable for the actions that they took. In December 2008, a jury found that Chevron was not liable.
on behalf of Chinese dissidents Wang Xiaoning
and Shi Tao
(Guao Quingsheng), claiming jurisdiction under the ATS. According to the Complaint, Wang and Shi Tao used Yahoo! accounts to share pro-democracy material, and a chinese subsidiary of Yahoo! gave the Chinese government identifying information that allowed authorities to identify and arrest them. The Complaint alleges that the plaintiffs were subjected to "torture, cruel, inhuman, or other degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention, and forced labor."
Yahoo! settled the case in November 2007 for an undisclosed amount of money, and it agreed to cover the plaintiff's legal costs as a part of the settlement. In a statement released after the settlement was made public, Yahoo! said that it would "provide 'financial, humanitarian and legal support to these families' and create a separate 'humanitarian relief fund' for other dissidents and their families."
in Myanmar
, formerly Burma. EarthRights International, the Center for Constitutional Rights
, Paul Hoffman, Hadsell & Stormer, and Judith Brown Chomsky served as co-counsel to the plaintiffs. In December 2004, Unocal agreed to settle after a motion for summary judgment
failed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California
.
United States Code
The Code of Laws of the United States of America is a compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal laws of the United States...
that reads: "The district courts
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
shall have original jurisdiction
Original jurisdiction
The original jurisdiction of a court is the power to hear a case for the first time, as opposed to appellate jurisdiction, when a court has the power to review a lower court's decision.-France:...
of any civil action by an alien
Alien (law)
In law, an alien is a person in a country who is not a citizen of that country.-Categorization:Types of "alien" persons are:*An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country which is foreign to him or her. On specified terms, this kind of alien may be called a legal alien of that country...
for a tort
Tort
A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general...
only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." This statute is notable for allowing United States courts to hear human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States.
History
The ATS was part of the Judiciary Act of 1789Judiciary Act of 1789
The United States Judiciary Act of 1789 was a landmark statute adopted on September 24, 1789 in the first session of the First United States Congress establishing the U.S. federal judiciary...
. There is little surviving legislative history
Legislative history
Legislative history includes any of various materials generated in the course of creating legislation, such as committee reports, analysis by legislative counsel, committee hearings, floor debates, and histories of actions taken...
regarding the Act, and its original meaning and purpose are uncertain. However, scholars have surmised that the Act was intended to assure foreign governments that the United States would act to prevent and provide remedies for breaches of customary international law, especially breaches concerning diplomats and merchants.
The ATS may have been enacted in response to a number of international incidents caused by the non-availability of remedies for foreign citizens in the United States. For example, the peace treaty ending the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
provided for the satisfaction of debts to British creditors. The refusal of some states to enforce the payment of such debts prompted Great Britain to threaten to retaliate. In 1784, French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois
François Barbé-Marbois
François Barbé-Marbois, marquis de Barbé-Marbois was a French politician.-Early career:Born in Metz, where his father was director of the local mint, Barbé-Marbois tutored the children of the Marquis de Castries. In 1779 he was made secretary of the French legation to the United States...
was assaulted, but no remedy was available to him. The incident was notorious internationally and prompted Congress to draft a resolution asking the states to allow suits in tort for the violation of the law of nations. However, few states enacted such a provision, and Congress subsequently included the ATS in the Judiciary Act of 1789.
From 1789 until 1980, only two courts based jurisdiction on the ATS.
Filartiga v. Pena-Irala
In 1980, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second CircuitUnited States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
decided Filartiga v. Pena-Irala
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, was a landmark case in United States and international law. It set the precedent for United States federal courts to punish non-American citizens for tortious acts committed outside the United States that were in violation of public international law or any treaties to...
, which "paved the way for a new conceptualization of the ATS." In Filartiga, two Paraguayan citizens resident in the United States, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Constitutional Rights
Al Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...
, brought suit against a Paraguyan former police chief who was also living in the United States. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant had tortured and murdered a member of their family, and they asserted that U.S. federal courts had jurisdiction over their suit under the ATS. The district court dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction
Subject-matter jurisdiction
Subject-matter jurisdiction is the authority of a court to hear cases of a particular type or cases relating to a specific subject matter. For instance, bankruptcy court only has the authority to hear bankruptcy cases....
, holding that the "law of nations" does not regulate a state's treatment of its own citizens.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
reversed. First, the Second Circuit held that the ATS, which allowed jurisdiction in the federal courts over a suit between two aliens, was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power, because "the law of nations...has always been part of the federal common law," and thus the statute fell within federal-question jurisdiction. Second, the court held that the contemporary law of nations had expanded to prohibit state-sanctioned torture. The court found that multilateral treaties and domestic prohibitions on torture evidenced a consistent state practice of proscribing official torture. The court similarly found that United Nations declarations such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights manifested an expectation of adherence to the prohibition of official torture. The court therefore held that the right to be free from torture had become a principle of customary international law. However, one of the judges on the panel hearing the case later wrote that Filartiga "should not be misread or exaggerated to support sweeping assertions that all (or even most) international human rights norms found in the Universal Declaration or in international human rights treaties have ripened into customary international law enforceable in the domestic courts."
Since Filartiga, jurisdiction under the ATS has been upheld in dozens of cases.
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain
The only United States Supreme Court case directly addressing the ATS is the 2004 case Sosa v. Alvarez-MachainSosa v. Alvarez-Machain
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 was a notable case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the Alien Tort Claims Act.-Facts:...
. The plaintiff in Sosa, Alvarez, brought a claim under the ATS for arbitrary arrest and detention. Alvarez had been indicted in the United States for torturing and murdering a Drug Enforcement Agency officer. When the United States was unable to secure Alvarez's extradition, it paid Sosa, a Mexican national, to kidnap Alvarez and bring him into the United States. Alvarez claimed that his "arrest" by Sosa was arbitrary because the warrant for his arrest only authorized his arrest within the United States. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
held that Alvarez's abduction constituted arbitrary arrest in violation of international law.
The Supreme Court reversed. The Supreme Court Court clarified that the ATS did not create a cause of action, but instead merely "furnish[ed] jurisdiction for a relatively modest set of actions alleging violations of the law of nations." Such actions must "rest on a norm of international character accepted by the civilized world and defined with a specificity comparable to the features of the 18th-century paradigms we have recognized." Although the scope of the ATS is not limited to violations of international law recognized in the 18th century, with respect to recognizing contemporary international norms, the Court's opinion stated that "the judicial power should be exercised on the understanding that the door is still ajar subject to vigilant doorkeeping."
In Alvarez's case, "a single illegal detention of less than a day, followed by the transfer of custody to lawful authorities and a prompt arraignment, violates no norm of customary international law so well defined as to support the creation of a federal remedy."
Ongoing Controversy
The exercise of federal jurisdiction in the United States over human rights cases arising out of events that took place overseas remains controversial. Some have called for the US Congress to eliminate the statute while others have argued for a multilateral solution through the OECD or UN."Violation of the Law of Nations"
The Supreme Court held in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain that the ATS provides a cause of action for violations of international norms that are as "specific, universal, and obligatory" as were the norms prohibiting violations of safe conducts, infringements of the rights of ambassadors, and piracy in the 18th century. Courts have found tortureTorture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
; war crimes; crimes against humanity; summary execution; prolonged arbitrary detention; and forced disappearance
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
to be actionable under the ATS.
Since Sosa, courts have struggled to define the level of specificity required for a norm to be actionable under the ATS. For example, subsequent to Sosa, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Middle District of Alabama...
overturned prior lower court decisions that had found cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment actionable, noting that Sosa repudiated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a source of law under the ATS. Similarly, courts have held that economic, social, and cultural rights are too indeterminate to satisfy Sosas specificity requirement. For example, in Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corp., the Second Circuit stated that the rights to life and to health are too indeterminate to constitute a cause of action under the ATS.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San...
, however, has held that the limits of a norm need not be defined with particularity to be actionable; rather, the norm need only be so defined that the particular acts upon which a claim is based certainly fall within the bounds of the norm. In Doe v. Qi, the court stated, "The fact that there may be doubt at the margins -- a fact that inheres in any definition -- does not negate the essence and application of that definition in clear cases." The court also described how to determine whether specific actions fall within the proscriptions of an international norm, holding that the actions alleged should be compared with actions that international adjudicatory bodies have found to be proscribed by the norm in question. It therefore examined decisions by institutions such as the Human Rights Committee
Human Rights Committee
The United Nations Human Rights Committee is a United Nations body of 18 experts that meets three times a year for four-week sessions to consider the five-yearly reports submitted by 162 UN member states on their compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,...
, the European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights is a quasi-judicial body tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective rights throughout the African continent as well as interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and considering individual complaints of...
to determine that pushing, hitting, and choking a plaintiff during one day of incarceration did not constitute cruel, unusual, or degrading treatment, whereas forcing a hand into a plaintiff's vagina did constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
Corporate Liability Under the Alien Tort Statute
As of October 2011, there was a circuit splitCircuit split
In the context of United States federal courts, a circuit split exists when two or more circuits in the United States court of appeals system have different interpretations of federal law....
regarding whether corporations, as opposed to natural people, could be held liable under the ATS. In 2010 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. that "customary international law has steadfastly rejected the notion of corporate liability for international crimes" and thus that "insofar as plaintiffs bring claims under the ATS against corporations, plaintiffs fail to allege violations of the law of nations, and plaintiffs' claims fall outside the limited jurisdiction provided by the ATS." However, in 2011, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals all ruled that corporate liability is possible under the Alien Tort Statute. On October 17, 2011, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would hear an appeal in Kiobel during its 2011–2012 term.
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum
The plaintiffs in Kiobel were citizens of Nigeria who claimed that Dutch, British, and Nigerian corporations which were engaged in oil exploration and production aided and abetted the Nigerian government during the 1990s in committing violations of customary international law. See 621 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. Sept. 17, 2010). Plaintiffs sought damages under the ATS. The defendants moved to dismiss based on a two-pronged argument. First, they argued that customary international law itself provides the rules by which to decide whether conduct violates the law of nations where non-state actors are alleged to have committed the wrong in question. Second, they contended that no norm has ever existed between nations that imposes liability upon corporate actors. On September 29, 2006, the district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims for aiding and abetting property destruction; forced exile; extrajudicial killing; and violation of the rights to life, liberty, security, and association. It reasoned that customary international law did not define those violations with sufficient particularity. The court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss with respect to the remaining claims of aiding and abetting arbitrary arrest and detention; crimes against humanity; and torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The district court then certified its entire order for interlocutory appeal to the Second Circuit based on the serious nature of the questions at issue.In a 2-1 decision issued on September 17, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that corporations cannot be held liable for violations of customary international law, finding that: (1) under both U.S. Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedents over the previous 30 years that address ATS suits alleging violations of customary international law, the scope of liability is determined by customary international law itself; (2) under Supreme Court precedent, the ATS requires courts to apply norms of international law—and not domestic law—to the scope of defendants’ liabilities. Such norms must be “specific, universal and obligatory"; and (3) under international law, “corporate liability is not a discernible—much less a universally recognized—norm of customary international law,” that the court could apply to the ATS, and that the plaintiffs’ ATS claims should indeed be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Kiobel petitioned the Supreme Court for review of the Second Circuit's decision, which was granted on October 17, 2011. The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case by the end of June, 2012.
Sarei v. Rio Tinto
In 2000, residents of the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea brought suit against multinational mining company Rio Tinto. The lawsuit is based on a 1988 revolt against Rio Tinto, and the plaintiffs allege that the Papua New Guinea government, using Rio Tinto helicopters and vehicles, killed about 15,000 people in an effort to put down the revolt. The lawsuit has been ongoing for eleven years, and as of October 25, 2011 has been heard twice before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en bancEn banc
En banc, in banc, in banco or in bank is a French term used to refer to the hearing of a legal case where all judges of a court will hear the case , rather than a panel of them. It is often used for unusually complex cases or cases considered to be of greater importance...
.
Civil suit against Chuckie Taylor
Charles McArthur Emmanuel (also known as "Chuckie Taylor" or "Taylor Jr."), the son of Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, was the commander of the infamously violent Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU), commonly known in Liberia as the "Demon Forces."In 2006, U.S. officials arrested Taylor Jr. upon entering the United States (via the Miami International Airport) and the Department of Justice later charged him based on torture he committed in Liberia. He was convicted of multiple counts of torture and conspiracy to torture and was sentenced to 97 years in prison. The World Organization for Human Rights USA and the Florida International University College of Law
Florida International University College of Law
The Florida International University College of Law is the law school of Florida International University, located in Miami, Florida in the United States...
filed a civil suit in the Southern District of Florida on behalf of five of Taylor Jr.’s victims pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act. The plaintiffs won by default judgment on all counts, and in February 2010, the court found Taylor liable to the plaintiffs for damages of over $22 million.
Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc.
On October 2, 2009, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc., held that "the mens rea standard for aiding and abetting liability in Alien Tort Statute actions is purpose rather than knowledge alone." In this case, which involves allegations against a Canadian oil company concerning its purported assistance to the government in Sudan in the forced movement of civilians residing near oil facilities, the court concluded that "plaintiffs have not established Talisman's purposeful complicity in human rights abuses." In reaching that conclusion, the Second Circuit stated that "the standard for imposing accessorial liability under the Alien Tort Statute must be drawn from international law; and that under international law a claimant must show that the defendant provided substantial assistance with the purpose of facilitating the alleged offenses."Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Company
On August 11, 2009, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a decision in Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Company. In this case, plaintiffs alleged that Coca-Cola bottlers in Colombia collaborated with Colombian paramilitary forces in "the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, detention, torture, and murder of Colombian trade unionists." However, the district court dismissed the complaint and the Eleventh Circuit upheld that ruling. In doing so, the Eleventh Circuit relied upon the Supreme Court's recent Ashcroft v. IqbalAshcroft v. Iqbal
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937 , was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that top government officials were not liable for the actions of their subordinates absent evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity...
decision http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1015.pdf in addressing the adequacy of the complaint, which has must have "facial plausibility" to survive dismissal, and noted that Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure demands "more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." The Eleventh Circuit then applied the Iqbal standard to plaintiffs' allegations against Coca-Cola and held that they were insufficient to survive dismissal.
Bowoto v. Chevron Corp.
Nigerian villagers brought claims against Chevron Corp. regarding events that occurred on a Chevron offshore drilling platform in 1998, when Nigerian soldiers suppressed a protest against Chevron's environmental and business practices. The protesters, with the help of nonprofit organizations including the Center for Constitutional RightsCenter for Constitutional Rights
Al Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...
, the Public Interest Lawyers Group, and EarthRights International, brought claims for wrongful death, torture, assault, battery, and negligence against Chevron, alleging that the company had paid the soldiers that landed on the platform and were therefore liable for the actions that they took. In December 2008, a jury found that Chevron was not liable.
Wang Xiaoning v. Yahoo!
In 2007, the World Organization for Human Rights USA filed a lawsuit against Yahoo!Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
on behalf of Chinese dissidents Wang Xiaoning
Wang Xiaoning
Wang Xiaoning is a Chinese dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People's Republic of China for publishing controversial material online using his Yahoo! email account....
and Shi Tao
Shi Tao
Shi Tao is a mainland Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal details to the Chinese government.-Brief history:Shi Tao...
(Guao Quingsheng), claiming jurisdiction under the ATS. According to the Complaint, Wang and Shi Tao used Yahoo! accounts to share pro-democracy material, and a chinese subsidiary of Yahoo! gave the Chinese government identifying information that allowed authorities to identify and arrest them. The Complaint alleges that the plaintiffs were subjected to "torture, cruel, inhuman, or other degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention, and forced labor."
Yahoo! settled the case in November 2007 for an undisclosed amount of money, and it agreed to cover the plaintiff's legal costs as a part of the settlement. In a statement released after the settlement was made public, Yahoo! said that it would "provide 'financial, humanitarian and legal support to these families' and create a separate 'humanitarian relief fund' for other dissidents and their families."
Doe v. Unocal
In September 1997, thirteen Burmese villagers filed suit against Unocal and their parent company, the Union Oil Company of California under the ATCA for alleged human rights violations, including forced labour, in the construction of the Yadana gas pipeline projectYadana Project
The Yadana gas field is an offshore gas field in the Andaman Sea. It is located about offshore to the nearest landfall in Myanmar.-Description:...
in Myanmar
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....
, formerly Burma. EarthRights International, the Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Constitutional Rights
Al Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...
, Paul Hoffman, Hadsell & Stormer, and Judith Brown Chomsky served as co-counsel to the plaintiffs. In December 2004, Unocal agreed to settle after a motion for summary judgment
Motion (legal)
In law, a motion is a procedural device to bring a limited, contested issue before a court for decision. A motion may be thought of as a request to the judge to make a decision about the case. Motions may be made at any point in administrative, criminal or civil proceedings, although that right is...
failed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California
United States District Court for the Central District of California
The United States District Court for the Central District of California serves over 18 million people in southern and central California, making it the largest federal judicial district by population...
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External links
- Alien Tort Claims Act Blog - up to date ATS/ATCA news
- Corporate Liability Claims Not Actionable Under Alien Tort Statute in the Suffolk Transnational Law ReviewSuffolk Transnational Law ReviewSuffolk Transnational Law Review is an honor board and law review published at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.-Organization:...
- Debate over Founders' original intent with the Alien Tort Claims Act in the Harvard Law RecordHarvard Law RecordThe Harvard Law Record is an independent, biweekly student-edited newspaper based at Harvard Law School. Founded in 1946, it is the oldest law school newspaper in the United States.-Characteristics:...
- Harvard Law - Alien Tort Claims Act
- Alien Tort Statute Today (no longer updated)
- Alien Tort Statute Cases Resulting in Plaintiff Victories