Federal Court Gives Go-Ahead for Africans to Sue Nestle in U.S. over Slave Labor Claims
21MondayApr 2014
Posted by gemini3insane in Africa, US News, US Supreme Court, World News
Nestle is facing allegations that it used cocoa plantations in Africa that employed slave labor.
Three residents of Mali sued Nestle USA in U.S. federal court in 2009 claiming they were forced as children to work without pay and were abused at Ivory Coast plantations that supplied Nestle with cocoa.
They brought their case to the United States and based it on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The plaintiffs, named as John Does, said they couldn’t get justice in the Ivory Coast due to its “notoriously corrupt” court system.
But their lawsuit, filed in a Northern California federal court, was thrown out the following year by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson, who ruled that corporations could not be sued under the Alien Tort Statute.
The plaintiffs appealed the decision to a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in a 2-1 ruling, reinstated the suit.
http://theresistanceunited.com/2014/04/21/federal-court-gives-go-ahead-for-africans-to-sue-nestle-in-u-s-over-slave-labor-claims/
