The US Supreme Court ruled (PDF) Dec. 14 in Daimer AG v. Bauman that DaimlerChrysler AG (Daimler) does not have to face suit in California for alleged human rights violations by a subsidiary that took place entirely in Argentina. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled for Barbara Bauman, who represented 21 Argentine residents, allowing them to bring suit for the actions of Mercedes-Benz Argentina (MB Argentina), a Daimler subsidiary, during the nation's 1976-1983 "Dirty War." The plaintiffs claim that MB Argentina collaborated with state security forces to kidnap, detain, torture and kill certain MB Argentina workers that are either named as plaintiffs or were closely related to the plaintiffs. They argue that business activities in California by Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) as a subsidiary of Daimler should permit the filing of a lawsuit because of an important agency relationship between MBUSA and Daimler, but the Supreme Court held that Daimler is not amenable to suit in California for injuries allegedly caused by conduct of MB Argentina that took place entirely outside the US.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg delivered the opinion of the court:
If Daimler's California activities sufficed to allow adjudication of this Argentina-rooted case in California, the same global reach would presumably be available in every other State in which MBUSA's sales are sizable. Such exorbitant exercises of all-purpose jurisdiction would scarcely permit out-of-state defendants "to structure their primary conduct with some minimum assurance as to where that conduct will and will not render them liable to suit." …It was therefore error for the Ninth Circuit to conclude that Daimler, even with MBUSA's contacts attributed to it, was at home in California, and hence subject to suit there on claims by foreign plaintiffs having nothing to do with anything that occurred or had its principal impact in California. … The Ninth Circuit, moreover, paid little heed to the risks to international comity its expansive view of general jurisdiction posed.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion.
From Jurist, Jan. 14. Used with permission.
Argentina sentences 15 to life over La Cacha prison
Argentina's ex-Interior Minister Jaime Lamont Smart and the former police chief of Buenos Aires province, Miguel Etchecolatz, were both been given life sentences Oct. 27 for running a detention and torture center in the 1970s. They were among 19 people charged with the abduction, murder and torture of 128 prisoners in the city of La Plata. The detention centre also functioned as a maternity unit for pregnant prisoners who gave birth before being executed. Fifteen were sentenced to life, with four others receiving sentences ranging from 12 to 13 years. The judge said those convicted were accomplices in a "genocide" against mostly young, left-wing activists in Argentina between 1976 and 1978. The detention center was in an old radio station building on the outskirts of La Plata, nicknamed La Cacha after a cartoon witch who abducted small children. (BBC News, Oct. 24)