Diplomatic Intervention in Legal Cases

Case Study

Talisman Energy in Sudan

In 1998, Talisman Energy Inc., a Canadian extractive company, obtained a 25 percent stake in the Greater Nile Oil production and pipeline project in Sudan. Human rights groups had long argued that the Government of Sudan used oil revenues from the project to buy arms to fight the civil war.

In 2000, a Canadian government-sponsored team (the Harker Mission) concluded that "there has been, and probably still is, major displacement of civilian populations related to oil extraction. Sudan is a place of extraordinary suffering and continuing human rights violations, even though some forward progress can be recorded, and the oil operations in which a Canadian company is involved add more suffering."

In 2001, the Presbyterian Church of Sudan filed a suit in a U.S. court under the Alien Tort Claims Act claiming that Talisman was involved in crimes such as ethnic cleansing, enslavement, kidnapping and rape in Sudan. In 2003, a U.S. Federal District Judge dismissed Talisman's objections that the case was outside U.S. jurisdiction. That same year, Talisman sold its stake in the Sudan project.¹

On two occasions Canada lobbied the U.S. to halt the case.² In 2004, as the Federal District Court continued to assess the merits of the lawsuit, the Canadian Embassy in Washington submitted a diplomatic letter to the court via the U.S. Department of State. The letter called the case "an infringement in the conduct of foreign relations by the Government of Canada" that would have a "chilling effect" on Canadian firms engaging in the Sudan. It argued that Canadian firms would think twice about working in Sudan since they would fear similar lawsuits in U.S. courts. A second Federal District Judge dismissed the objections, and allowed the case to proceed.³

The case was dismissed in September 2006 for lack of admissible evidence.