SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 12/1/2020
Argument analysis: Justices send mixed messages on corporate liability for allegedly aiding child slavery abroad
The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday in a pair of cases, Nestlé USA v. Doe I and Cargill, Inc. v. Doe I, that ask whether a lawsuit against American corporations under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreigners to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts for serious violations of international law, can continue. The plaintiffs in the case are six former child slaves in Ivory Coast, who contend that the defendants, both U.S. food giants, facilitated human-rights abuses on the cocoa plantations where the youths worked. Although the Supreme Court in the past has indicated that the kinds of claims that can be brought under the ATS are relatively limited, after nearly 90 minutes of debate today several justices appeared reluctant to rule that U.S. corporations like Nestlé and Cargill can never be sued under the statute. At the same time, it seemed that the two companies might nonetheless eke out a narrow win in this case, as some justices appeared skeptical that the plaintiffs’ allegations were enough to allow the case to proceed.
The former child slaves are citizens of Mali. They allege that as children they were sold to cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, where they were forced to work long hours without pay and were beaten if they didn’t work quickly enough. Nestlé and Cargill, they claim, aided and abetted this forced labor by buying their cocoa from, and providing other support to, plantations in Ivory Coast despite knowing that the plantations used child slavery. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed the youths’ lawsuit to go forward.
Arguing for Nestlé and Cargill, lawyer Neal Katyal agreed that the plaintiffs’ claims were “horrific.†But he stressed that the companies were merely an “afterthought†in their complaint, which alleged only that the companies had made decisions in the United States and knew about child slavery in Ivory Coast. Katyal urged the justices to throw the case out on either of two grounds: The ATS does not apply to U.S. corporations like Nestlé and Cargill; or the ATS does not apply when, as Katyal contended, the conduct at the heart of the case occurred outside the United States.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/12/argument-analysis-justices-send-mixed-messages-on-corporate-liability-for-allegedly-aiding-child-slavery-abroad/
