The lawsuits alleged that Ford provided specialized vehicles to the South African police and securities forces to help enforce apartheid – the country’s former system of white minority rule – and shared information with government officials about anti-apartheid and union activists. IBM was accused of providing technology and training to perpetuate racial separation and the “denationalization” of black South Africans.
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The ruling from the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after a 13-year-long legal battle by victims of South African apartheid, who filed the initial lawsuit in 2002 against dozens of corporations.
The ruling upholds a 2014 decision by U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan dismissing the complaint against Ford and IBM. The ruling, written by U.S. Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes on behalf of the three-judge panel, cites a 2013 decision by the Supreme Court that significantly limits the reach of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute.
He also found no showing that “by developing hardware and software to collect innocuous population data”, IBM purposefully contributed to apartheid-era abuses. “As we noted earlier, mere knowledge without proof of goal is insufficient to make out the proper mens rea for aiding and abetting liability”, Cabranes wrote. The law was created in part to deal with piracy claims but in recent decades human rights lawyers have used it to pursue damages from individuals or companies alleged to have supported abuses around the world.
“We certainly will consider an appeal to the Supreme Court“, she said. The automaker issued a statement following the result, adding it was still committed to expansion in South Afirca, following 91 years of uninterrupted production there. IBM is based in Armonk, New York, and Ford is based in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford was not the only carmaker escaping litigation, which also included most recently Germany’s Daimler AG.
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The case is In re: South African Apartheid Litigation, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 14-4104.
