http://spktruth2power.wordpress.com/2010/0...-rights-abuses/

Found this a little bit ago. Sounds rather like a step toward extraterritoriality.

Don't sue in a US court over things you claim were done in Nigeria to Nigerians.

I think you're missing the point of the article.

The law in question allows exactly that, the legal prosecution in the USA of an individual, for particularly heinous international crimes. So if you go out and cap a dozen Nigerians in Nigeria, that law can slap you down when you get back to the United States.

Normally, corporations can be held accountable just like individuals for crimes, but in this case the court decided the law didn't apply to corporations.



-karma

"A radical misunderstanding of international law" indeed. I reaaaaallly hope the ICJ does something about this, if the Supreme Court doesn't.

This is not as bad as the people who wrote the article made it sound. If the plaintiffs in this case brought a suit against the executive(s) who assisted the government in doing those nasty things in Nigeria it would have gone forward. I haven't read the case yet nor do I know a whole lot about IHL but hopefully I'll be able to crack it open later.

Based off the first reading, I find myself having to agree with the dissentor. Just because international law has not assigned liability to corporate entities does not mean that precedent remains.

Saying 'Oh, well we know they have it domestically, but this is overseas' is, in a word, stupid. What's more, I believe the court knows it, as butthurt as their response to the dissention was. This was thrown out on a semantical argument - Royal Dutch Shell Oil Co. may not be able to pull the trigger nor write the check, but it still has control of the money. Had the suit named executives and people specifically there, then this would have likely had a different result. Barring that, there's always trial by media.

The issue with corporate liability is that the corporation as a whole is never really liable. The liability falls on the exec running whatever division was in charge at the time, and as such can be cut loose when found guilty. Now if there is a press uproar over it, there may be a PR backlash. But if they manage to keep it of the proverbial front page, it is business as usual.

Then there is the craziness that is pfizers deal with US gov. I think it was linked here on the forum before, but basically it allowed pfizer to stay in market (even tho recent US law say that they should have been banned) while killing of a newly formed division for marketing a non-approved medicine.

Eyah. The trouble I have with this is that a corporate entity exists to absorb the liability of the people under its umbrella, and make lots of money doing so.

What this ruling is doing is allowing the corporation to hide the executives that commit crimes against humanity under the corporate veil. If you can't name the executive that's signing off on these things, then you can't bring suit against the corporation.

"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

That's not exactly true.

Corporation has the same word root as "corporeal." In other words, the corporation is an entity similar to human beings. It has similar, but not identical, rights as any other citizen. The whole point of incorporating is that many types of litigation (both civil and criminal) fall squarely on the corporation and NOT the individuals. The classic example of a car repair shop:

Joe owns a car repair shop. Mary comes in because her brakes are kinda getting worn down and wants Joe to replace them. Joe agrees, replaces them, and Mary pays him the agreed upon sum. However, Joe installed the brakes improperly and Mary crashes into a tree as a result. She sues Joe for both the cost of the break repair (which she claims he did improperly) and the various expenses resulting from the accident (damage to her car, medical damage, etc). Now, normally, Joe would be completely liable for the damages. He'd have to pay it out of any asset he has both his company's assets and his personal assets. Depending on how much damage was caused by the accident, he could go bankrupt. However, if his car repair shop was a corporation (and yes, you can have corporations with only one employee), then only the corporation would be liable. As such, only the company's assets could be taken and not his personal ones.

Unfortunately, that example falls apart when the primary punishment proscribed by the law requires a physical body (such as jail time or capital punishment) but that is a separate issue.

Now, all that the article posts is the dissenting (or minority) opinion. The majority opinion is that corporations cannot be held liable under the Alien Tort Statute (torts are non-criminal suits) because the ATS is designed to work in conjunction with international law. Unfortunately, international law doesn't recognize corporations as being a legal individual. As such, the appellate court ruled that the court didn't have sufficient jurisdiction in this case. Now, if individuals in the company were sued, they could be held liable. Just not the corporation itself. It is also important to note: Although the court affirmed the lower courts dismissal of the case, they did not dismiss the claims themselves. They just stated that they had no jurisdiction in this matter and that original plaintiffs could still litigate the matter but in a different court.

TL;DR Version: The plaintiffs sued the wrong individual and they are allowed to go back and sue someone else appropriate.

Gotta love Civ4 quotes

I admit, this is a Shadowrun tool I've never really used. Imagine how often a VP and his division is let go because it's easier than the corporation accepting responsibility. A VP let go because of a successful run against him (or a failed run he ordered) may make an interesting bump in the road later on.

Yeah, some bum on the street in the remnants of a nice suit going after the group "Randomly", only to find out that he lost his job, and his Corporate SIN, due to a 'Run the PCs did.

Wow. Like the fifth world wasn't horrifying enough.

Nice find! And only 10 years off from the SR calendar.

Okay, okay... not quite the same I realize. But a fun parallel nonetheless.

The actual decision.

Wait, does this mean that if I apply for a business license for selling cupcakes or something, I can abuse basic human rights without any fear of legal rammification?

Karoline's Cupcake and Slave Bakery, coming to a town near you!

Technically, it is the opposite of Shadowrun corporate extraterritoriality. It says corporation have no existence at all outside of national legal systems. But maybe this will prompt in reaction to give corporations a legal definition in international law, paving the way for extraterritoriality.

Actually, that is exactly what it doesn't say.

Here is the brief of what the ruling was: In international law (not USA law), corporations are not people. As such, they cannot be taken to court in the same way that people are. Instead, you have to take the actual individuals who committed the crime to court rather then the corporation. In other words, this (in the long run) is a BAD precedent for corporations since it removes the protection a corporation provides for it's employees from liability.

EXAMPLE:
Karoline's Cupcake and Slave Bakery "hires" slaves. Normally, there would be some (minor) protection for you (Karoline + other employees) since you were doing it as part of your corporate job. However, this ruling says "fuck that, you don't have any protection" and now you PERSONALLY are held liable. So instead of your corporation getting fucked, now you are.

Which makes it easy for scapegoating and protecting the Corporation.

Yes and no. Scapegoating only works when the scapegoat can't (or won't) drag the people who gave him the orders to do so. In American law (and I presume many other law systems), every member of a conspiracy (legal term: A group of people deciding to commit a crime) is considered guilty of the same crime even if they didn't personally commit the crime. (Example: Joe tells jack to kill someone. Jack kills someone. Joe is just as guilty of murder as jack is). The hard part for scapegoats is proving that connection.

Which if it involved a private conversation-can be pretty hard to do. THe other issue is where the suite takes place for example

Karoline's Cupcake and Slave Bakery uses slave labor in country x. Country X allows for slave labor as part of its "rehabilitation" of political malcontents and those who go bankrupt (under the guise of indefinite indentured servitude). Amnesty International sues Karoline's in the US. CEO says that the case needs to be tried in country x, and US courts have no jurisdiction in country X's labor laws.

U.S. citizens and based corporate entities are still subject to U.S. law outside of the country - I.E. they come back, they get nailed to the proverbial cross.

So...? Do a Polanski?

Hope they don't extradite, yes. That's sort of the reason behind this Act the article describes.

Maybe---in my example country X calls the slavery indentured servitude and part of its penal code. Karoline's says it is just providing jobs to the convicts in the foreign country. It even pays them (well it is put in a fund and promptly stolen by govt X's officials).

IIRC, if the international court says 'hey, that's slavery' then the U.S. courts will sit up and take notice. In this particular case, if the plaintiffs had named the executives instead of the corporation, it would have likely gone forward.

Which makes it an example of "Plaintiffs did not do the research".



-k

Exactly. Also, the case was brought under a Tort statute. For those not familiar with the term, a Tort is a civil action. ie. This wasn't about the criminal act of slavery, it was about the monetary damages the plaintiffs suffered as a result. They probably sued the corporation (rather then the executives that ordered the acts or the employees who committed them) because it had the biggest pockets.

Indeed, because the corporations cover the liability as they were ostensibly 'business operations'.

Well, they're sort of caught between a rock and a hard spot. If they name the executives, then it's questionable as to whether or not Dutch Royal Shell would cover the liability.

The US Court said "DR Shell didn't pull the trigger, Joe Schmoe in Marketing did, so you'll have to sue him."

Man, now I'm just not sure. It's something I'd love to discuss in an international law class...if I was taking one. *cough*

Karoline's International Cupcakes, where sweating blood isn't a figure of speech

Also, if any international cupcake conglomerate crops up anytime soon, I'm totally not involved.

How do a corporation leave a country anyways?

"This is mister Johnson from HR, care to have lunch?"

Plausible deniability up the ying yang...