New York associate Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky authored an article, "Abdullahi v. Pfizer: Implications for Environmental Claims Under The Alien Tort Statute," which was published in the July 2010 edition of the American Bar Association's International Environmental Law Newsletter.
Ramos-Mrosovsky's article explores the potential for increasing use of the Alien Tort Statute to bring environmental claims against U.S. corporations on the basis of environmental harms occurring abroad. The article focuses on the how the reasoning of the Second Circuit's decision in Abdullahi v. Pfizer, 562 F.3d 163 (2d Cir. 2009), which allowed an ATS action to be brought on the basis of customary international law norms that the Second Circuit found to prohibit nonconsensual medical experimentation, may have made it much easier for plaintiffs to bring environmental claims under the ATS. The ATS is a two-centuries old law that permits foreign plaintiffs to bring lawsuits for violations of "the law of nations" in U.S. courts.
Click here for a full version of the article, available from the ABA website.