By Alan Gomez

Labor leaders overseas are turning increasingly to an obscure 18th-century law that could for the first time make U.S. companies liable at home for the violent and sometimes murderous actions of their employees around the world.

Several lawsuits alleging violation of the Alien Tort Statute are awaiting trial in federal courts, filed with the help of unions and activist groups in the USA.

One against Geo W. Drummond Ltd. of Alabama alleges the contracting company's subsidiary in Colombia paid death squads to kill labor leaders.

The lawsuits have set up a showdown over whether boardrooms in the USA should pay big-money verdicts for crimes not prosecuted in countries where corruption and violence are often seen as a cost of doing business.

"I realize that there are problems in lots of different countries," said William Jeffress, a lawyer for Drummond. "But to have the U.S. courts attempt to provide remedies for all of the injustices that occur in countries around the world is not a rational system."

At least a dozen such cases are ongoing. Among them:

•Relatives of people killed in an airstrike by the Colombia military say that Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles should pay damages because its security contractor worked with the military to take out leftist terrorists accused of sabotaging Occidental's pipeline operation. The plaintiffs say the attack killed 17 unarmed civilians.

•Chevron, headquartered in San Francisco, is fighting a lawsuit filed by Nigerians who say the company should be held responsible for the killing of protesters by Nigerian security forces outside a refinery owned by its subsidiary.

•Del Monte is being sued by five union officials in Guatemala who say they were kidnapped by armed men hired by the Miami corporation's subsidiary and forced to quit their jobs at a banana farm.

All of the lawsuits come under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows citizens of foreign nations to sue in U.S. courts for actions that violate the "law of nations," such as genocide, torture and slavery. Human rights activists began using the law in the 1980s to sue foreign military leaders accused of repression who had retired in the USA. Now, those activists have teamed with labor unions here to sue U.S. corporations for oppression of workers in Latin America and Africa.

"A lot of these countries do not have judicial systems which are independent and free of corruption," said Dan Kovalik, a lawyer representing the families of victims killed in the Drummond case. "It's unfair to make them try to bring a case where it would be futile."

The companies say they are being unfairly targeted by liberal activists who are using the law to try to remedy the injustices of foreign governments. Lawyers for Drummond and other companies have said they are being blamed for crimes they deplore and knew nothing about.

"We think the Founding Fathers didn't intend all this," said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council.

Reinsch said the statute, which was almost never invoked until recently, is being misused. "What you got is trial lawyers who have seized on it as the new asbestos, filing these hoping to hit the jackpot," he said.

The Bush administration, in a federal court case involving charges against oil giant Unocal in Burma, also known as Myanmar, stated that the federal courts were never intended to settle disputes between foreigners who have no legal issues against the U.S. government.

"Although it may be tempting to open our courts to right every wrong all over the world, the function has not been assigned to the federal courts," stated a Justice Department brief filed in 2003.

The State Department also weighed in, saying in an advisory letter to the district judge presiding over the Occidental case that such litigation interferes with U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy.

"It may also be perceived that the U.S. government does not recognize the legitimacy of Colombian judicial institutions," according to William Taft IV, the former chief legal adviser for the State Department.

The families of the victims killed in Colombia say in their lawsuit that they can find justice only in the USA.

Most of the details of the Drummond case had been kept under seal. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the case unsealed March 14 after Stephen Flanagan Jackson, a professor at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala., made a request through the Freedom of Information Act.

Among the details revealed was that a witness says the head of the company's Colombia operation gave a "suitcase full of money" to a paramilitary group to commit the killings. The case is likely to go to trial this summer.

Reinsch warns that if the lawsuits prevail, U.S. companies may be forced to shut down foreign operations. That could prove to be another injustice to workers who rely on the companies for jobs that usually pay more than most.

"The oil in all the nice countries has been found already," Reinsch said.