NEW YORK (Reuters) – Indonesian villagers who accused Exxon Mobil Corp’s security forces of murder, torture and other atrocities have regained their right to sue the giant oil company in the United States.
A federal appeals court said on Friday that companies are not immune from liability under a 1789 U.S. law known as the Alien Tort Statute for “heinous conduct” allegedly committed by its agents in violation of human rights norms.
The 15 villagers contended in their lawsuit that family members were killed and that others were “beaten, burned, shocked with cattle prods, kicked, and subjected to other forms of brutality and cruelty” amounting to torture in Indonesia’s Aceh province between 1999 and 2001, a period of civil unrest.
A divided panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said Exxon Mobil should be forced to defend against such charges.
Given that laws in civilized nations hold corporations responsible for lesser wrongs, “it would create a bizarre anomaly to immunize corporations from liability for the conduct of their agents in lawsuits brought for shockingly egregious violations of universally recognized principles of international law,” Judge Judith Rogers wrote for a 2-1 majority.
Friday’s decision reversed part of a ruling by the federal district court in
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