Over the objections of the US government, a federal appeals court on Friday reinstated some of the class-action claims of millions of people who accused roughly 50 American, Canadian and European companies of supporting apartheid in South Africa.
The US government has said the litigation would interfere with South Africa's reconciliation and redress efforts and would cause "significant tension between the US and South Africa." The South African government had said the cases interfered with its right to litigate such claims itself.
"Today's appeals court decision is a major victory," said Michael Hausfeld, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "It enables victims of terrible human rights abuses to hold those who aided and abetted those abuses accountable."
Other lawyers on both sides of the dispute did not immediately return telephone messages for comment.
A lower court had tossed out the case, in part because of the vigorous objections by the US and its allies.
In its ruling Friday, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan urged US District Judge John Sprizzo, who threw out the case in 2004, to consider prior rulings in deciding how much to let the US government's view of the case affect his decisions.
It directed him to note one case in particular. It said judges should not automatically dismiss every case that might negatively affect foreign relations "to avoid difficult and somewhat sensitive decisions in the context of human rights."
In a footnote, it added: "Indeed, to give dispositive weight to the executive branch's views would likely raise serious separation-of-powers concerns."
The claimants, people who have lived in South African after 1948, originally filed 10 separate actions in multiple federal courts. The cases were combined in New York.
The appeals court had heard arguments in January of last year. It reinstated claims brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act, an obscure 1789 law originally enacted to prosecute pirates.
The law has been used since 1980 by Holocaust survivors and relatives of people tortured or killed under despotic foreign regimes. Sprizzo had dismissed those claims, saying he did not have jurisdiction. The appeals court said he must analyze the subject further.
Sprizzo had said he must be "extremely cautious in permitting suits here based upon a corporation's doing business in countries with less than stellar human rights records, especially since the consequences of such an approach could have significant, if not disastrous, effects on international commerce."
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS