Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

Abstract

In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Supreme Court significantly curtailed extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute ("ATS"). However, a separate issue often overlooked in several of the ATS cases involving foreign country defendants is the question of adjudicatory (i.e. personal) jurisdiction. Indeed, the issue could have been presented in Kiobel itself, where the claims asserted against Royal Dutch Shell (a Netherlands corporation) and Shell Transport (an English corporation) were based on allegations that the Royal Dutch/Shell Transport group itself had orchestrated and directed the abuses that were carried out by their Nigerian subsidiaries in Nigeria against the Ogoni people. In the related companion case against the same defendants, Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, plaintiffs relied upon the presence of U.S. direct and indirect subsidiaries that did business in New York, and in particular, on an indirect subsidiary's maintenance of an Investor Relations Office in New York that did work for Royal Dutch and Shell as the basis for jurisdiction over Royal Dutch/Shell Transport in New York. The Magistrate Judge rejected plaintiffs' theories of jurisdiction, but the District Judge, Kimba Wood, found that the sole business of the Investor Relations Office--nominally a part of an indirect subsidiary, Shell Oil (a Delaware corporation)--was the performance of investor relationship services for Royal Dutch/Shell Transport and was sufficient to constitute the defendants' presence in New York. The Second Circuit agreed, holding that the activities of the Investor Relations Office were attributable to the ...

First Page

123

Volume

66

Publication Date

2013

Download

Share

COinS