For readers unfamiliar with earlier posts on the Alien Torts Statute and its role in the corporate social responsibility debate, the title of this piece may sound like gobbledygook. Review of the interim ruling in Apartheid probably helps. As I noted in that piece, Scheindlin USDJ instructed counsel to brief on the ‘touch and concern’ test put forward by the Supreme Court in Kiobel, with the warning that they must show in particular that the companies concerned acted ‘not only with the knowledge but with the purpose to aid and abet the South African regime’s tortious conduct as alleged in these complaints’.
Having now reviewed those extra briefs, she has decided that the high bar set by the USCC in Kiobel was not met in current case. She distinguished (at p.18) the case from Al-Shimari, for the alleged violation of international law was inflicted by the South African subsidiaries of the US defendant corporations, over whom defendants may have exercised control however control alone, it transpires, is not enough to create sufficient link with the US to meet the Kiobel test.
Applicants had previously already argued that critical policy level decisions were made in the US, and that the provision of expertise, management, technology and equipment essential to the alleged abuses came from the US. This has now, so it would seem, been further backed up by detailed facts however even these facts did not graduate so to speak the US companies’ involvement from management and effective control to ‘aiding and abetting’ as Scheindlin USDJ had instructed counsel to show.
Similarish issues are at stake in trying to subject activities taking place outside the EU, to EU law by virtue of companies’ EU headquarters.
Geert.
