California Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney recently rejected Unocal Corp.'s attempt to dismiss claims that Unocal facilitated and abetted human rights abuses on its Yadana Pipeline project in Burma.

The plaintiffs in John Doe I et. al. v. Unocal Corp. et al. are Burmese villagers who lived near the pipeline. Some were forced to work on the project by Unocal's pipeline partner, the notoriously repressive Burmese military. The remainder suffered other egregious abuses during the military's provision of "security" for the project. For example, two of the plaintiffs were sexually assaulted, and one, an infant, died after being kicked into a cooking fire.

In a companion case, a federal court in Los Angeles found last summer that "Plaintiffs present[ed] evidence demonstrating that before joining the Project, Unocal knew that the [Burmese] military had a record of committing human rights abuses; that the Project hired the military to provide security for the Project, a military that forced villagers to work and entire villages to relocate for the benefit of the Project; that the military, while forcing villagers to work and relocate, committed numerous acts of violence; and that Unocal knew or should have known that the military did commit, was committing and would continue to commit these tortious acts."

Despite these findings, the federal court dismissed plaintiffs' federal case on legal grounds. That ruling is on appeal. Unocal argued to the state court that the federal court's dismissal barred plaintiffs' state case because federal and state law are the same. Judge Chaney rejected that argument, noting that state law differs from federal law.

Unocal also made a number of arguments based upon the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that struck down Massachusetts' Burma Sanctions law. In particular, Unocal argued that it would violate the U.S. Constitution for a state court to hear plaintiffs' claims because doing so would intrude upon U.S. foreign relations, and that plaintiffs' claims are preempted by the federal Burma sanctions law. The court rejected all of these arguments.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, including co-counsel EarthRights International, are extremely pleased with the ruling, since it puts the plaintiffs one step closer to having their day in American court, and brings Unocal one step closer to being held accountable for their actions.