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Waving Not Drowning: Kiobel Outside the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Robert McCorquodale
Robert McCorquodale*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham, London
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Extract

Access to an effective remedy is part of the third pillar of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles). It should require states to provide access to judicial remedies for human rights violations, even those that have occurred outside the territory of the state by a corporation domiciled in that state, especially where claimants “cannot access [their] home State courts regardless of the merits of the claim.” While the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. may seem to overwhelm or even drown some of the expectations of such remedies within the United States, the case law in the rest of the world is unlikely to be greatly affected by the ruling due to the jurisdictional and legal system foundations of other states. This article will examine the main case law and judicial remedies sought across the world, with a special emphasis on Europe, where the majority of large non-U.S. transnational corporations have their headquarters.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 107 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 846 - 851
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2013

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References

1 Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, UN Doc. HR/PUB/11/04, princ. 26 (2011), available at http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf [hereinafter Guiding Principles].

2 Id., princ. 26 cmt.; see also id., princ. 7 cmt.

3 Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133S.Ct. 1659 (2013). This ruling was based on the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. §1350 [hereinafter ATS].

4 See Smith, Stevie, Not Waving but Drowning, in The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith 303 (1975)Google Scholar.

5 See UN Conference on Trade & Development, World Investment Report 2013, Annex Table 28: The World’s Top 100 Non-Financial TNCs, Ranked by Foreign Assets, 2012 (June 26, 2013), available at http://unctad.org/en/Pages/DIAE/World%20Investment%20Report/Annex-Tables.aspx.

6 Council Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, Art. 2(1), 2001 O.J. (L 12) 1, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2001:012:0001:0023:en:PDF [hereinafter Brussels I]. In El-Hojouj v. Unnamed libyan Officials, Arrondissementsrechtbank Den Haag [District Court of the Hague], Mar. 21, 2012, Case No. 400882/HA ZA 11-2252 (ECLI:NL:RBSGR:2012:BV9748), the court accepted jurisdiction where the only known domicile was that of the claimant on the basis of forum necessitatis. See, in this Agora, Nicola Jagers, Katinka Jesse & Jonathan Verschuuren, The Future of Corporate Liability for Extraterritorial Human Rights Abuses: The Dutch Case Against Shell, available at www.asil.org/AJILUnbound/KiobelAgora.

7 Brussels I, supra note 6, Art. 60.

8 Some very limited exceptions to this rule exist. Id., Arts. 23, 27. See, in this Agora, Andrew Sanger, Corporations and Transnational Litigation: Comparing Kiobel with the Jurisprudence of English Courts, available at www.asil.org/AJILUnbound/KiobelAgora.

9 The Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union has held that Brussels I, supra note 6, prohibited the UK courts from declining jurisdiction on the grounds of forum non conveniens for corporations domiciled in the European Union. Case C-128/01, Owusu v. Jackson, 2005 ECR I-553. The UK courts had already decided that this ground was not a substantial hindrance to jurisdiction. See Connelly v. RTZ Corp. PLC, [1998] A.C. 854 (H.L.); Lubbe v. Cape PLC, [2000] 4 All E.R. 268 (H.L.).

10 Council Regulation (EC) No. 864/2007 of 11 July 2007 on the Law Applicable to Non-contractual Obligations (Rome II), Art. 4(1), 2007 O.J. (L 199) 40. This provision can give rise to evidential issues in terms of proving the substance of the law in the foreign state.

11 Id., Art. 16.

12 Id., Art. 4(3). A manifestly closer connection might exist where the parties already have some type of relationship, such as a contractual relationship under a supply chain. Article 17 provides that the forum state’s rules about health and safety of workers may also apply.

13 Id., Art. 26. This public order exception might be applied where the laws of the foreign state are considered to be contrary to human rights. See Kuwait Airways Corp. v. Iraq Airways Co., [2002] UKHL 19, para. 18, [2002] 2 A.C. 883.

14 E.g., Connelly, supra note 9; Lubbe, supra note 9; Ngcobov. Thor Chem. Holdings Ltd., [1995] Times L. Rep. 579 (Eng.); Sithole v. Thor Chem. Holdings Ltd., [1999] EWCA (Civ) 706 (Eng.).

15 E.g., Motto v. Trafigura Ltd., [2012] W.L.R. 657 (Eng.); Bodo Cmty. v. Shell Petroleum Dev. Co. (Nigeria) Ltd., No. HQ 11X01280 (Eng.) (unresolved litigation); see also Carley Petesch, Nigeria Community Rejects Shell Compensation Offer, YAHOO! NEWS, Sept. 13, 2013, at http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-community-rejects-shell-compensation-offer-163345774.html.

16 Goldhaber, Michael D., Corporate Human Rights Litigation in Non-U.S. Courts—A Comparative Scorecard, 3 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 127 (2013)Google Scholar.

17 Arroyo v. BP Petroleum Co. (Colom.) Ltd., Particulars of Claim, No. HQ 08X00328 (High Court of Justice 2008) (Eng.) (unreported) (claim based on breach of contract).

18 Some possible avenues for action exist under the Bribery Act, 2010, c.23 §§6, 12 (UK), and the Serious Crime Act, 2007, §§44–46, 52 (UK). UK legislative information is available online at www.legislation.gov.uk.

19 Chandler v. Cape PLC, [2012] EWCA (Civ) 525 (Eng.).

20 Id., para. 80.

21 Id., paras. 72–79.

22 See Guiding Principles, supra note 1, princs. 15, 17.

23 See, e.g., Dagi v. BHP (No. 2), [1997] 1 V.R. 428 (Austl.); Recherches Internationales Québec v. Cambior Inc., [1998] Q.J. No. 2554 (S.C.J.) (Can.); Anvil Mining Ltd. v. Association Canadienne contre l’Impunité, [2012] C.A. 117 (Can. Que.); see also Baxi, Upendra, Writing About Impunity and Environment: The ‘Silver Jubilee’ of the Bhopal Catastrophe, 1 J. Hum. Rts. & Env’t 23 (2010)Google Scholar (India); Lee v. Minister Corr. Serv., [2012] ZACC 30, para. 95 (S. Afr.).

24 For example, the changes created by the United Kingdom’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, c.10, seem to be contrary to the Guiding Principles, supra note 1. Letter from John Ruggie, UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, to Jonathan Djanogly, UK Justice Minister (May 16, 2011), available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/16/united-nations-legal-aid-cuts-trafigura.

25 See Brief for the Governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of the Netherlands as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S.Ct. 1659 (2013) (No. 10-1491), available at http://www.chamberlitigation.com/sites/default/files/scotus/files/2012/Kiobel,%20et%20al.%20v.%20Royal%20Dutch%20Petroleum,%20et%20al.%20(Amicus%20Brief%20-%20United%20Kingdom%20and%20Netherlands).PDF.

26 Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, Good Business:Implementing the Un Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Sept. 2013), available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/236901/BHR_Action_Plan_-_final_online_version_1_.pdf (Sept. 4, 2013); see Robert McCorquodale, Expecting Business to Respect Human Rights Without Incentives or Sanctions, Uk Human Rights Blog (Sept. 4, 2013), at http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2013/09/04/expecting-business-to-respect-human-rights-without-incentives-or-sanctions-robert-mccorquodale.

27 See, in this Agora, Caroline Kaeb & David Scheffer, The Paradox of Kiobel in Europe.

28 See, in this Agora, Vivian Grosswald Curran & David Sloss, Reviving Human Rights Litigation After Kiobel.

29 See, e.g., Trafigura Beheer BV, Gerechtsh of Amsterdam [Court of Appeals of Amsterdam], Dec. 23, 2011, Case No. 23-003334-10 (ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2011:BU9239) (litigation involving oil waste), available at http: //uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2011:BU9237; Gwynne Skinner, Robert Mccorquodale, Olivier De Schutter & Andie Lambe, The Third Pillar: Access to Judicial Remedies for Human Rights Violations by Transnational Business (2013), available at http://www.corporate-responsibility.org/publications/research-reports/access-to-judicial-remedy.

30 See Brief of the European Commission on Behalf of the European Union as Amicus Curiae in Support of Neither Party, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S.Ct. 1659 (2013) (No. 10-1491), available at http://harvardhumanrights.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/european-commission-on-behalf-of-the-european-union-revised.pdf; see also Kaeb & Scheffer, supra note 27. Many of these states now provide for corporate criminal liability.

31 See Fidh—Worldwide Human Rights Movement, Amesys Case: The Investigation Chamber Green Lights the Investigative Proceedings on the Sale of Surveillance Equipment by Amesys to the Khadafi Regime (2013), available at http://www.fidh.org/spip.php?page=article_pdf&id_article=12752. Note that class actions or other collective redress is not widely available in Europe. See Extra Territoriality and Collective Redress 15–41 (Duncan Fairgrieve & Eva Lein eds., 2012).

32 Association France-Palestine Solidarité v. Société Alstom Transport SA, Judgment, Cour d’appel de Versailles de 22 mars 2013, available at http://www.dreuz.info/2013/04/la-cour-dappel-de-versailles-olp-c-alstom-et-veolia- declare-que-loccupation-par-israel-nest-pas-illegale (English translation available online at http://www.intjewishlawyers.org/main/files/Versailles%20Court%20of%20Appeals%20ruling%20doc%20English%20.pdf).

33 Akpan v. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Arrondissementsrechtbank Den Haag, Jan. 30, 2013, Case No. C/09/337050/HA ZA 09-1580 (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2013:BY9854). For a fuller discussion, see, in this Agora, Ja¨gers, Jesse & Verschuuren, supra note 6.

34 Akpan, supra note 33, para. 4.29 (citing Chandler, supra note 19).

35 Other civil law states, like Brazil, allow such litigation. See Houtzager, Peter P., The Movement of the Landless (MST), Juridical Field, and Legal Change in Brazil, in Law and Globalization From Below: Towards A Cosmopolitan Legality 218 (de Sousa Santos, Boaventura & Rodríguez-Garavito, Cesar eds., 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Lipietz v. Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, No. 305966, Conseil d’édat (CE) de Bordeaux [High Administrative Court of Bordeaux] (Dec. 21, 2007) (Fr.), available at http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/Docs/NLP/France/Lipietz_Appel_27-3-2007.pdf; see, e.g., Curran, Vivian Grosswald, Globalization, Legal Transnationalization and Crimes Against Humanity: The Lipietz Case , 56 Am. J. Comp. L. 363, 391–92 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (noting that the Lipietz case was the first time that a French court accepted such a civil claim, rather than relying on a case to be brought by the French authorities through the criminal process).

37 Human rights have been mentioned in arguments in European cases, but this occasional reference has not been decisive. See Lubbe, supra note 9, at 277; Akpan, supra note 33, para. 4.56. However, there could be the possibility of reliance on Article 6 (fair trial) and Article 13 (remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights. See Markovic v. Italy, 44 Eur. H.R. Rep. 1045 (2007).

38 Guerrero v. Monterrico Metals PLC, [2009] EWHC 2475 (QB) (Eng.).

39 Guiding Principles, supra note 1, princs. 12, 14.

40 However, there are risks in relying on national courts to understand and apply international law.

41 Human rights language tends to add to the local group’s own language for the claim, rather than to displace it. Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights & Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice (2006).

42 It is hoped that the victims of human rights violations can bring claims within their own jurisdictions in due course, especially if legislation to give effect to the Guiding Principles, supra note 1, is put in place.

43 See, e.g., Hoffman, Paul & Stephens, Beth, International Human Rights Cases Under State Law and in State Courts, 3 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. L 9 (2013)Google Scholar.

44 See McCorquodale, Robert, Business, the International Rule of Law and Human Rights, in The Rule of Law in International and Comparative Context 27 (McCorquodale, Robert ed., 2010)Google Scholar.