A statute of limitations, known in civil law systems as a prescriptive period, is a law passed by a legislative body to set the maximum time after an event within which legal proceedings may be initiated. In the United States, a government agency is permitted by the Congress to create under federal regulations its own statute of limitations.
Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels, and trespass to land.
The Alien Tort Statute, also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section in the United States Code that gives federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits filed by foreign nationals for torts committed in violation of international law. It was first introduced by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and is one of the oldest federal laws still in effect in the U.S.
Drummond Company, Inc. is a privately owned company based in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, involved in the mining and processing of coal and coal products as well as oil and real estate.
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, was a landmark case in United States and international law. It set the precedent for United States federal courts to punish non-American citizens for tortious acts committed outside the United States that were in violation of public international law or any treaties to which the United States is a party. It thus extends the jurisdiction of United States courts to tortious acts committed around the world. The case was decided by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit consisting of judges Wilfred Feinberg, Irving Kaufman, and Amalya Lyle Kearse.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City, New York, in the United States. It was founded in 1966 by Arthur Kinoy, William Kunstler and others particularly to support activists in the implementation of civil rights legislation and to achieve social justice.
Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola, 578 F.3d 1252, was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of a case filed by Colombian trade union Sinaltrainal against Coca-Cola in a Miami district court, demanding monetary compensation of $500 million under the Alien Tort Claims Act for the deaths of three workers in Colombia.
Insurance bad faith is a tort unique to the law of the United States that an insurance company commits by violating the "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing" which automatically exists by operation of law in every insurance contract. In common law countries such as Australia and the UK, the issue is usually framed in the context of a failure of the duty of utmost good faith originating in English insurance law, which does not constitute a tort but rather provides the insured a contractual remedy unique to insurance law.
Bowoto v. Chevron Corp. was a lawsuit against Chevron Nigeria Ltd., a subsidiary of Chevron USA, which went to trial in 2008 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs, Nigerian citizens who had been injured during or who had survived human rights violations perpetrated by Nigerian military personnel, alleged that the Chevron subsidiary backed the military action and that the parent company thus should bear liability in US courts for the resultant fallout. The suit was decided on December 1, 2008, when nine jurors unanimously agreed Chevron was not liable for any of the numerous allegations. Judgment was entered the next day, officially exonerating Chevron.
Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harith, four former Guantánamo Bay detainees, filed suit in 2004 in the United States District Court in Washington, DC against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. They charged that illegal interrogation tactics were permitted to be used against them by Secretary Rumsfeld and the military chain of command. The plaintiffs each sought seek compensatory damages for torture and arbitrary detention while being held at Guantánamo.
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Alien Tort Statute and the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Carlos Mario Jiménez Naranjo aka "Macaco" is a Colombian former drug lord and paramilitary leader. Jimenez was a member of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group which demobilized between 2005 and 2007. Jimenez ordered the assassination of numerous people in the region of the Santander and North Santander specially in the city of Barrancabermeja where his organization confronted and defeated the National Liberation Army (ELN) for the control of the territory. Jimenez was the commander in chief of the Central Bolívar Bloc of the AUC.
The Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 is a statute that allows for the filing of civil suits in the United States against individuals who, acting in an official capacity for any foreign nation, committed torture and/or extrajudicial killing. The statute requires a plaintiff to show exhaustion of local remedies in the location of the crime, to the extent that such remedies are "adequate and available." Plaintiffs may be U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens.
John Doe VII v. Exxon Mobil Corp (09–7125) is a lawsuit filed in the United States by 15 Indonesian villagers against Exxon Mobil Corporation from the oil-rich province of Aceh, Indonesia. The case has widespread implications for multinational corporations doing business in other countries. The case may eventually reach the Supreme Court because lower federal courts have disagreed on the liability of United States companies operating outside of the United States. Fifteen Indonesian villagers claim government security forces working for Exxon Mobil committed brutal oppression while guarding a natural gas facility in 2000 to 2001. On July 8, 2011 a divided 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reversed part of a ruling by the federal district court reinstating the lawsuit. In their decision, the court stated that the 1789 Alien Tort Statute allowed corporations in foreign countries to be "held liable for the torts committed by their agents."
Susan L. Burke is an American lawyer known for cases in which she has represented plaintiffs suing the American military or military contractors, such as the Abtan v. Blackwater case. She represented former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison in a suit against interrogators and translators from CACI and Titan Corp. who were tasked with obtaining military intelligence from them during their detention.
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U.S. 108 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the court found that the Alien Tort Claims Act presumptively does not apply extraterritorially.
Garner v. Teamsters Local 776, 346 U.S. 485 (1953), is a US labor law case, concerning the scope of federal preemption against state law for labor rights.
Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, No. 16-499, 584 U.S. ___ (2018) was a case from the United States Supreme Court which addressed the issue of corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Enacted as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the ATS allows foreign nationals to bring lawsuits in U.S. district courts for torts "in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." At issue in this case was whether the ATS allows foreign corporations to be sued in U.S. courts. In a fractured decision delivered by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court held, by a 5–4 vote, that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute.
Arce v. García, 434 F.3d 1254, is a landmark Eleventh Circuit case brought by three Salvadoran plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). These claims were brought under the doctrine of command responsibility against two high-ranking Salvadoran military personnel who ordered and carried out grave human rights abuses over the course of the country’s twelve year civil war.
Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe, 593 U. S. ____ (2021) is a United States Supreme Court decision regarding the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which provides federal courts jurisdiction over claims brought by foreign nationals for violations of international law. Consolidated with Cargill, Inc. v. Doe, the case concerned a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé USA and Cargill for aiding and abetting child slavery in Côte d’Ivoire by purchasing from cocoa producers that utilize child slave labor from Mali. The plaintiffs, who were former slave laborers in the cocoa farms, brought their claim in U.S. district court under the ATS.
