Ford, IBM have apartheid suit dismissed in US

Published Sep 1, 2014

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Jonathan Stempel New York

A MANHATTAN federal judge has dismissed a 12-year-old lawsuit accusing Ford Motor Company and IBM of encouraging human rights abuses in apartheid-era South Africa, reluctantly concluding that the case does not belong in US courts.

US District Judge Shira Scheindlin said on Thursday that the black South Africans who brought the case did not show “relevant conduct” by Ford and IBM within the US to justify holding the companies liable.

The plaintiffs had accused Ford, IBM and other companies of having between the 1970s and early 1990s aided South Africa’s former apartheid government in abuses such as killings and torture, by having made military vehicles and computers for government security forces.

The case had been brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that lets non-US citizens pursue some cases in US courts over alleged violations of international law.

In April last year, the US Supreme Court said that law was presumed to cover only violations in the US, or violations elsewhere that “touch and concern” US territory “with sufficient force”.

Four months later, the federal appeals court in Manhattan applied that holding, and said the Ford and IBM cases should be dismissed altogether.

In April, Judge Scheindlin gave the plaintiffs one more chance, to meet the new standards imposed by those higher courts. But in Thursday’s decision, she said the bar proved too high, and that any alleged international law violations were by Ford and IBM’s South African units, and occurred abroad.

“It’s been 12 years. We’re devastated by the decision,” said Diane Sammons, a partner at Nagel Rice in Roseland, New Jersey, who represents some plaintiffs. – Reuters

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