Unocal Faces Trial For Rights Abuses

Dan Ackman- Forbes.com

June 12, 2002

NEW YORK - Over the past several years, U.S. courts have been exercising increasingly international jurisdiction in the name of human rights. There have been massive civil rights suits on behalf of Holocaust victims, actions against foreign heads of state and, of course, the U.S. now claims the right to arrest and try persons accused of anti-American terrorism wherever they are found.

Yesterday in California, a judge asserted international jurisdiction in a way that some U.S. companies may not be so happy about.

A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles ordered Unocal to stand trial for human rights abuses allegedly committed in association with a pipeline project in Myanmar. Judge Victoria Chaney denied a Unocal motion for summary judgment and said citizens of and refugees from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, could sue the company--based in the Los Angeles suburb of El Segundo--for rights abuses in Southeast Asia.

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