This suit by Indonesian villagers against ExxonMobil alleges claims under District of Columbia and Delaware law arising from alleged human rights abuses committed by Indonesian forces in the province of Aceh. The judge dismissed the case, based on the general rule that non-resident aliens have no standing to sue in U.S. courts.
The case was appealed to the D.C. Circuit, and the NAM joined with the National Foreign Trade Council, USA*Engage and the U.S. Council for International Business in an amicus brief supporting this result. We argued that federal suits under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), and now state suits under state law, cause irreparable economic harm, interfere with U.S. foreign relations, and impede the policies designed to promote the very democratic and human-rights goals that the plaintiffs purport to advance. Allowing this kind of litigation under a patchwork of different state laws -- for injuries perpetrated against foreign nationals by other foreign nationals in a foreign country -- threatens U.S. economic and political relations. The federal government alone is assigned the constitutional responsibility for foreign relations, and federal law displaces state laws that threaten the effective exercise of the nation's foreign policy. In addition, there is no indication that the state laws at issue here were ever intended to apply to the extraterritorial claims at issue.
Unfortunately, the court ruled 7/8/2011 that aiding-and-abetting liability “is well established under the ATS” and that “the district court erred in ruling that appellants lack prudential standing to bring their non-federal tort claims and in the choice of law determination.” Thus, the case was sent back to the district court for further proceedings.