View previous stories
	Multinational corporations targeting lawyers acting for mistreated workers abroad by Barry Meier New York Times   Over the past decade, companies doing business in Colombia, like Chiquita Brands and Dole Food, have incurred the wrath of Terrence Collingsworth, a lawyer who has accused them of mistreating workers or conspiring to kill labor activists.   But these days, Mr. Collingsworth has been forced on the defensive. One of his targets, Drummond, a coal producer based in Birmingham, Ala., recently asked a federal judge to hold the lawyer in contempt as part of a libel suit it is pressing against him. Chiquita and Dole, pointing to the Drummond case, have also raised questions about his practices.   The problems engulfing Mr. Collingsworth underscore the mounting difficulties facing a small group of plaintiffs’ lawyers who have carved out a niche suing multinational corporations on charges that they violated human rights overseas.   The biggest setback for this kind of litigation came two years ago when the Conservative dominated Supreme Court sharply limited the use of an obscure law adopted in 1789, the Alien Tort Statute, to bring international claims in American courts.   Meanwhile, a number of (contrived) controversies involving Mr. Collingsworth and other lawyers have undermined their work and made it possible for companies to mount counterattacks.   “The bar has been set higher,” for human rights litigation, claims Susan H. Farbstein, a law professor at Harvard.   In a widely publicized case, a federal judge last March threw out a $19 billion verdict against Chevron for oil-related pollution in Ecuador after finding that a lawyer, Steven R. Donziger, purportedly falsified evidence. Last month, Drummond asked a federal judge overhearing its libel case against Mr. Collingsworth to issue sanctions against him, claiming he had repeatedly ignored court orders to turn over documents that may show he paid off witnesses in Colombia for their testimony.   Marco Simons, a lawyer with EarthRights International, an advocacy group in Washington, said that companies were increasingly fighting back against the human rights lawyers suing them. “This is the new playbook from defendants,” said Mr. Simons, who is involved in a lawsuit against Chiquita.   Citing continuing litigation, Mr. Collingsworth as well as executives of Drummond declined to be interviewed for this article. American companies that operated in Colombia have all insisted that they were not involved in violence against any workers or citizens there, either directly or indirectly.   It was about two decades ago that humans rights lawyers like Mr. Collingsworth started using the Alien Tort Statute as a vehicle to file lawsuits in courts in the United States against companies on behalf of foreign workers and others. The lawsuits have included actions against oil companies in Nigeria, mining operations in Papua New Guinea and a pipeline in Burma.   Human rights cases have drawn public attention, and some legal experts believe they have spurred changes in corporate behavior abroad. However, more often than not, they do not succeed. One problem is the difficulty of obtaining accurate information about events that occurred years earlier in foreign countries during periods of intense violence, said Alan Sykes, a law professor at New York University.   That kind of fog hangs over the Colombia-related cases brought by Mr. Collingsworth. There is little question that American companies once used paramilitary groups, such as the right-wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or A.U.C., to protect their operations there from attacks by leftist guerrillas. But determining what role, if any, American executives played in the mayhem is made difficult by a number of factors including the reliability of former A.U.C. leaders testifying against them.   Mr. Collingsworth, 58, started filing human rights lawsuits in the 1990s while executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, a Washington-based group that monitors corporate practices. In 2001, he met a Colombian lawyer who asked him to represent the families of labor leaders who were murdered near a mine owned by Drummond, a privately held company.   A year later, Mr. Collingsworth filed a lawsuit in federal court in Birmingham, Ala., claiming that Drummond executives conspired with paramilitaries to carry out the killings. In 2007, Drummond’s Colombian subsidiary was found not liable by a jury, but by then events in the South American country had laid the groundwork for more lawsuits.   In the mid-2000s, the Colombian government set up a program under which the A.U.C. disarmed and the group’s leaders, in exchange for reduced prison sentences, provided public accounts of their crimes. In those statements, some ex-militia leaders claimed that American executives approved of violence.   The Justice Department took action against Chiquita in 2007, charging that the banana company continued to pay the A.U.C. for protection even after it was designated as a terrorist organization. Soon after the company pleaded guilty, Mr. Collingsworth and several large laws firms including Boies, Schiller & Flexner sued Chiquita on behalf of Colombian clients.   Then, Collingsworth, armed with fresh statements from ex-A.U.C. leaders, sued Drummond again in 2009. Soon after that, his problems began. In 2011, he wrote letters to Drummond’s business associates, accusing the coal producer of conspiring with the A.U.C. to kill workers.   “The only reasonable explanation for your investment in Drummond is that you don’t have the facts about Drummond’s direct involvement in war crimes and other major human rights violations,” he wrote to the chief executive of Itochu Corporation, a Japanese conglomerate.   Drummond responded by filing a libel claim against Mr. Collingsworth and said he was engaging in a smear campaign against it.   Sandra Baron, an expert in libel law, said it was highly unusual for a lawyer to be sued for slander. “There are special protections for what a lawyer can say inside a courtroom,” said Ms. Baron, a senior fellow at Yale Law School. “But once outside it, a lawyer is typically treated like anyone else.”   Mr. Collingsworth responded by arguing in court papers that media outlets had widely reported on Drummond’s affiliation with the A.U.C. and that the F.B.I. had sent agents to Colombia to probe the company’s actions. But the lawyer also gave Drummond another opening by allowing it to question the purpose of payments he had made to former A.U.C. leaders.   Lawyers involved in human rights cases said it is not unusual for them to pay to provide protection for witnesses who have received threats; Mr. Collingsworth has said that any payments he made to witnesses were to provide protection for people facing death threats. But they added it is important for a lawyer to inform the judge on the case about such payments, which it is claimed Mr. Collingsworth failed to do in a timely fashion in the Drummond case.   Meanwhile, federal judges have thrown out several human rights cases since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision on use of the Alien Tort Statute, including major parts of the ones against Drummond and Chiquita.   Lawyers have appealed the Chiquita decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the company’s guilty plea to criminal charges should make it fair game for lawsuits here. But legal experts said that if the Supreme Court decides not to review the Chiquita case, or rejects that argument, the future prospects of success for human rights lawsuits will be diminished even further.   In a statement, Robert K. Spotswood, a lawyer representing Mr. Collingsworth and his law firm, Conrad & Scherer, said his clients had done nothing wrong.   “It is not a surprise to us that a company sued for human rights violations would aggressively attack the lawyers who filed the complaints against it,” Mr. Spotswood said.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/the-supreme-courts-setback-for-human-rights.html http://www.earthrights.org/ http://www.laborrights.org/ Visit the related web page
	The return of the debtors prison by PBS Newshour, agencies   The return of the debtors prison. (PBS Newshour)   Cities across the country are increasingly turning to what are known as private probation companies to collect unpaid fines. But are indigent people ending up in jail because they can''t afford to pay?   Since NewsHour''s first story on this issue aired last spring, the Childersburg Municipal Court issued a “standing order” stating that “In no case shall an indigent defendant be incarcerated … based solely on his or her inability to pay fines.” But the practice continues elsewhere in the country.   Special correspondent John Carlos Frey takes an in-depth look at what some are calling the return of the debtors prison.   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/return-debtors-prison/   Oct. 2014   Western Australian Opposition demands independent review of policy that jails fine defaulters. (ABC News)   Unpaid fines are leading to more women and Aboriginal people being locked up in Western Australian prisons, the opposition says.   Each year since 2010, more than 1,100 people have been imprisoned because they are too poor to pay fines, Labor says.   One in six Indigenous people entering prison did so because they could not pay the penalties, with incarceration rates jumping almost six-fold between 2008 and 2013.   The number of Indigenous women jailed for fine default soared from 33 to 223 during those five years, the opposition said.   In Western Australia, fine defaulters can go to prison to clear a fine if they have been unsuccessful in paying it off via a payment plan or completing a community service order.   The Labor Opposition has called on the state government to increase funding to supervise fine defaulters serving community service orders.   The party wants an independent review of the legislation and regulations governing community service orders and fine default, to assess the economic and social impact of the current system.   MARK COLVIN: The West Australian Opposition says Premier Colin Barnett must commission an independent review of the policy that sees fine defaulters jailed.   Labor''s Paul Papalia says the policy doesn''t work, and disproportionately affects the most disadvantaged members of West Australian society.   The policy is once again in the spotlight after the August death in custody of Miss Dhu, a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman who''d been jailed over unpaid fines.. From Perth, Anna Vidot.   ANNA VIDOT: Each year, more than 1,100 West Australians are locked up purely for unpaid fines.   Labor''s corrective services spokesman Paul Papalia says that''s costing the WA Government millions, and hurting the state''s most disadvantaged people.   PAUL PAPALIA: Regardless of whether you''re saying it doesn''t make sense because you''re incarcerating people and it''s unfair, or you''re saying it doesn''t make sense because it costs money and it''s stupid, it doesn''t work.   If the suggestion is this is a deterrent and will force people to comply or urge them to comply, that''s not working is it? If it were working, the numbers on the fine enforcement registry would be diminishing, the costs owed by debtors would be diminishing and there would be fewer people going to prison because they''d learn their lesson or they''d be afraid of it.   It doesn''t work - the wrong people are captured by this policy and it''s not providing any benefit to the community.   ANNA VIDOT: The Opposition wants Premier Colin Barnett to commission an independent review of the policy, which means West Australians who can''t pay fines upfront have more options: to pay in instalments, or work off the fines through community service orders.   Labor says the cost of jailing fine defaulters has increased 220 per cent since 2008.. The policy was once again put under the spotlight after the death in custody of a young Aboriginal woman in August.   Twenty-two-year-old Miss Dhu died while she was in the custody of police at Port Hedland in the WA Pilbara. It''s understood she was locked up because she owed $1000 in fines. Visit the related web page
	View more stories