Tag Archives: Joint and Several Liability
3 October 2013
Date:
3 October 2013
Location:
Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam
Oudemanhuispoort 4-6
Room A009
Time:
15:30-17:00
On Thursday 3 October 2013, Professor Michael Faure will give a lecture entitled: ‘Joint and several liability in tort law: lessons for international law’.
Professor Faure is Professor of Comparative and International Environmental Law at Maastricht University, academic director at the Maastricht European institute for transnational legal research (METRO), and Academic Director of the Ius Commune Research School. He is also Professor of Comparative Private Law and Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. (more…)
25 April 2013
On 24 April 2013, the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands ordered Frans van Anraat, a Dutch national and former businessman convicted of selling raw materials for mustard gas to Saddam Hussein, to pay compensation to 17 victims of chemical weapon attacks by the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1988.
The case was brought by survivors of attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja in Iraq in 1988, in which an estimated 5,600 civilians were killed.
The judgment raises interesting questions from a shared responsibility perspective, as Van Anraat was only one of many contributors to the eventual injuries (see blog post written by André Nollkaemper here).
Source: Judgment Rechtbank 's-Gravenhage | LJN: BZ8333 | C/09/355125 / HA ZA 09-4324 (in Dutch)
Source: The Washington Post | Dutch court awards compensation to Iraqi, Iranian mustard gas attack survivors
25 April 2013
On 24 April, the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands ordered Frans van Anraat, a Dutch national, to pay compensation to 17 victims of chemical weapon attacks by the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1988. The judgment raises interesting questions from a shared responsibility perspective, as Van Anraat obviously only was one of many contributors to the eventual injuries.
The case was brought by 17 survivors of the 1988 attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja in Iraq, in which an estimated 5,600 civilians were killed. Saddam Hussein ordered the Halabja attack as part of a crackdown on a Kurdish rebellion in the north, during the final months of the war with Iraq.
In the 2007 judgment in the criminal trial, the Court had found that Van Anraat was Iraq’s sole supplier of a chemical substance used in the production of mustard gas. He had claimed that he believed the chemical was to be used in the Iraqi textile industry. The Court rejected that argument in the criminal trial, saying that he knew the chemicals might well be used for war crimes. Van Anraat is now serving a prison sentence in the Netherlands. (more…)
28 June 2012
During the past weeks several reports have emerged revealing details on one of the gravest cyber-attacks that have taken place, the Flame malware. It has been suggested that Flame has been co-sponsored by the same State or States that had launched Stuxnet, even though the head of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) of the UN has stated that this is mere speculation, Stuxnet being the virus that had targeted the Iranian nuclear programme. Flame has been used to attack computers and network systems across the Middle East. The malware exploited a flaw in the Windows operating system in order to map and monitor the targeted computers. The situation provoked a reaction by the ITU, which stressed the need for co-operation among states in addressing the problems arising out of the growing use of networks to infiltrate and cause damage to systems across the world. (more…)
25 November 2011
The principle of joint liability in undeveloped in international law. Though some treaties refer to it, and several scholarly articles that have recognized its importance for situations where multiple actors cause injury, the scope and contents of the principle remain uncertain. It is therefore of some importance that the Advisory Opinion of the Seabed Disputes Chamber of ITLOS on Responsibilities and Obligations of States sponsoring persons and entities with respect to activities in the Area (1 February 2011) discussed the principle. In his presentation at the SHARES Seminar on Shared Responsibility in Environmental Law, held at ACIL on 7 November 2011, Judge Treves provided further insight into these, until now somewhat neglected, aspects of the Opinion. (more…)