Federal Court Rules Corporations Can Be Liable for Complicity In Genocide

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VIEW: Federal Court Rules Corporations Can Be Liable for Complicity In Genocide
Author : Francis GoodwinArticle ID : 802
Audience : DefaultVersion 1.00
Published Date: 2005/6/15 20:29:25Reads : 3
Allan Gerson -- Huffington Post

Amazingly, it took a federal court ruling Monday to make clear that corporations can't get away with murder, including aiding and abetting.

To be sure, American corporations have increasingly been held liable for damages to victims of lung cancer from improper sale and marketing of cigarettes without nicotine warnings, for asbestos abuses, and most recently for sex and age discrimination. But when it comes to awful things done abroad, that's a different story. Courts have generally shied away from even asserting jurisdiction and stayed clear of navigating the shoals of international law to determine liability. To remove some of the judicial inhibitions that have prevented a more vigorous approach to corporate irresponsibility, Judge Allen Schwartz of the Southern District of New York ruled on March 19, 2003 that the Talisman Energy Co. of Canada (with offices in New York) was culpable of having aided and abetted the government of Sudan in its genocidal campaign against its citizens in the South by ethnically cleansing vast swaths of land intended for Talisman's oil drilling (The Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy Inc. and Republic of the Sudan, 2001). Talisman’s claim that international law had not advanced to the stage where corporations can be held liable for aiding and abetting murder was rejected.

Not content to abide by Judge Schwartz’s ruling (he died unexpectedly shortly thereafter), Talisman Energy called on a distinguished expert in international law to provide a sworn affidavit to the court maintaining that international law gives corporations immunity (e.g., arguing that Flick, Farben and Krupp, the Nazi industrialists, were held liable in their personal capacity and no liability extended to the corporations they led). Moreover, citing as precedent the US Supreme Court ruling of last summer in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, et al. (2004) it moved for summary judgment on the pleadings and reversal of Judge Schwartz's ruling.

Last Monday, Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York ruled to affirm Judge Schwartz's ruling, and in the process gave an enormous boost to the movement for greater corporate accountability.<snip>

watch the movie the corporation

How long until Nazi collaborators are forced to pay for their complicity?