In an opinion issued yesterday, Judge Scheindlin denied the motion to dismiss claims under the Alien Tort Statue against Ford, GM and IBM, finding that two recent Supreme Court rulings had undermined the Second Circuit’s prior decision that corporations could not be liable under the statute. The case, In re South Afican Apartheid Litigation, accuses the defendants of aiding and abetting violations of the ATS by providing military and computer equipment to the apartheid regime. In 2009, the defendants had sought a writ of mandamus of Judge Scheindlin’s decision allowing the ATS claims to go forward. Before ruling, the Second Circuit decided the Kiobel case, in which it held that the ATS did not cover corporate defendants (Kiobel I). That case went to the Supreme Court, which ultimately decided the case on different grounds — whether the ATS could apply extraterritorially — declining to hold that the ATS did not apply to corporations (Kiobel II).
Continue Reading Judge Scheindlin Rules that Alien Tort Claims May Proceed Against Corporate Defendants