Supreme Court to Weigh Torture Lawsuits Against Corporations

Famed Nigerian author and environmental activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa at a rally, 1993.
(photo: Greenpeace/AP)

By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times

27 February 12

Can international companies be sued in the U.S. over ties to foreign regimes that commit human rights abuses?

wo years ago, the Supreme Court said corporations were like people and had the same free-speech rights to spend unlimited sums on campaigns ads. Now, in a major test of human rights law, the justices will decide whether corporations are like people when they are sued for aiding foreign regimes that kill or torture their own people.

It would "create a weird paradox" if the corporations are people when funding campaigns but not when they violate human rights, said Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

At issue is an obscure 18th century law unearthed by human rights lawyers in the 1980s and increasingly used against U.S. corporations whose work overseas has entangled them with brutal regimes.

On Tuesday, the justices will hear an appeal of a suit accusing Royal Dutch Petroleum and its Shell subsidiary in the United States of aiding a former Nigerian regime whose military police tortured, raped and executed minority residents in the oil-rich delta. The victims included famed Nigerian author and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.  READ MORE