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On January 29, 2025, the NAM filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse a troubling 8th Circuit decision allowing foreign plaintiffs to bring claims in U.S. courts based on alleged injuries that occurred abroad. When U.S. companies invest in foreign industrial or commercial activities, they reasonably expect that litigation involving environmental harms—or similar mass tort claims focused on overseas operations and overseas injuries—will occur in the courts of the foreign jurisdiction at issue, absent an agreement stating otherwise or some other fact-specific reason why U.S. courts would be the logical, efficient, and expected forum. In this case, however, the 8th Circuit blessed an end-run around such expectations and created a playbook for mass-tort plaintiffs alleging foreign harms to proceed in the United States. The case arose after Peruvian citizens sued the defendants in Missouri state court asserting negligence claims stemming from defendants’ mining operations in Peru. The defendants moved to dismiss the case on the ground that it was improperly brought in a U.S. court, but the trial court denied the defendants’ motion and the 8th Circuit affirmed on appeal.

We explain in our brief that if the 8th Circuit’s decision stands, it threatens to invite a wave of foreign torts into U.S. courts, seeking to impose state-law standards on the overseas operations of foreign entities with U.S. parent companies. This approach would undermine the regulatory certainty U.S. manufacturers need to invest in overseas operations and weaken the supply chains that are critical to manufacturers’ ability thrive.