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Article: Landmark ruling allows apartheid victims to sue multinationals: in one of the most significant legal rulings in the post-apartheid history of South Africa, victims of the apartheid regime have finally received the green light from a US judge to sue multinational corporations that knowingly aided and abetted the apartheid regime. The implications of this ruling are colossal, not only for Africa but globally. Khadija Sharife reports.(SPOTLIGHT)
- Article from:
- African Business
- Article date:
- June 1, 2009
- Author:
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In a landmark 144-page judgment last April, Southern District of New York Judge Shira Scheindlin found that some of the world's largest multinational corporations were engaged in aiding and abetting apartheid, torture, extrajudicial killing and other crimes. They could, therefore, be held accountable before a US court.
Judge John E Sprizzo, who stated that the class action suits "could have serious consequences for US foreign relations and US commercial trade", had previously dismissed the lawsuits, but the class action suits were later reinstated by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007. This was done over the objections of the US State Department and the ...