Romero v. Drummond Co.

Drummond, Ltd. (defendant) was the Colombian subsidiary of a coal-mining company that was based in Alabama. SINTRAMIENERGETICA was a trade union in Colombia. The union claimed that the president of Drummond’s mining operations (with the knowledge of executives based in the United States) hired a paramilitary organization to torture and murder several of the union’s members and leaders. Several union members (plaintiffs) sued Drummond under the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (Torture Act) in federal district court. Drummond moved for summary judgment. The district court granted summary judgment on all the claims except for one charging that Drummond had aided and abetted the killings, which constituted extrajudicial-killing war crimes. The aiding-and-abetting claim went to trial, where a jury returned a verdict for Drummond. The union members appealed a litany of issues, and in response, Drummond claimed that the courts lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. In particular, Drummond argued that subject-matter jurisdiction was lacking for three reasons: (1) the statutes did not allow for lawsuits against corporations, (2) the statutes did not allow for aiding-and-abetting liability, and (3) the extrajudicial-killing claim under the Alien Tort Statute was invalid because the Torture Act provided the only basis for such a claim.