US court allows apartheid claims to go forward

By Paritosh Bansal

NEW YORK, Oct 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. appellate court on Friday allowed claims brought by victims of apartheid against dozens of major companies to go forward, saying a lower court erred in ruling it did not have jurisdiction over the matter.

The corporations named in the suits include oil companies such as BP Plc (BP.L) and Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), banks such as Citigroup (C.N), Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and UBS AG (UBSN.VX), as well as other multinationals like IBM (IBM.N), General Motors GM.N and Ford Motor Co (F.N).

The plaintiffs include the Khulumani Support Group, a South African nonprofit that works with victims of apartheid and says it has 32,700 members who are survivors of apartheid violence.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling vacated an order by U.S. District Judge John Sprizzo in Manhattan that had dismissed claims brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) by the plaintiffs, who had argued that the companies collaborated with the government of South Africa in maintaining apartheid.

"The district court erred in holding that aiding and abetting violations of customary international law cannot provide a basis for ATCA jurisdiction," the court ruled. "We hold that in this Circuit, a plaintiff may plead a theory of aiding and abetting liability under the ATCA."

Two of the three judges in the appellate panel -- Robert Katzmann and Peter Hall -- filed separate concurring opinions. The third, Edward Korman, concurred in part but disagreed with the judgment reversing the dismissal.

Three groups of plaintiffs had filed 10 separate actions in multiple federal courts asserting apartheid-related claims against the companies, according to the 147-page ruling. The cases were all transferred to the federal court in Manhattan in December 2002.

The appeals court did uphold the dismissal of claims made under the Torture Victim Protection Act. A group of plaintiffs had alleged the defendants aided and abetted the apartheid regime's use of torture and extrajudicial killing against the plaintiffs.