Judge denies apartheid victims claims class in former GM case

By Caroline Salls

Pittsburgh, Jan. 28 - A group of South African residents lost their fight to make Motors Liquidation Co. pay for General Motors' alleged aiding and abetting of the perpetrators of the apartheid system after a federal judge ruled Friday that class certification be denied and the claims be disallowed, according to a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

The claimants originally filed lawsuits against General Motors Corp. before it filed for bankruptcy under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign nationals to bring actions in the U.S. federal courts against those alleged to have committed torts in violation international law.

Specifically, the claimants allege that they were victims of the apartheid system in South Africa, and that GM aided and abetted the apartheid, resulting in injury to the claimants.

As a result, the claimants were asking the court to certify a claims class on behalf of themselves and other alleged apartheid victims.

The company, now Motors Liquidation, asked the court to disallow the claims.

According to the ruling, the Botha claimant group alleged that GM produced military vehicles that were used by South African security forces in their efforts to maintain the apartheid regime and engaged in workplace segregation and retaliation against employees who engaged in union and/or anti-apartheid activity.

Meanwhile, the Balintulo claimant group alleged that GM provided substantial assistance to the South African security forces knowing that the security forces were violating international law, and "this assistance had a substantial effect on the perpetration of its criminal and tortious activities against the purported classes."

Both group left the amount of their claims to be determined.

In his ruling, judge Robert E. Gerber said common issues of the proposed class don't predominate over individual issues. As a result, he said class treatment isn't the best way to deal with the underlying claims.

"Entertaining these claims on a class action basis would significantly complicate the debtors' Chapter 11 case, making this huge case even more difficult to manage - with the likelihood, if not certainty, that consideration of these claims on a class basis would materially delay the distributions to the debtors' thousands of other creditors," Gerber said in his ruling.

GM, a Detroit-based automaker, filed for bankruptcy on June 1, 2009. The new General Motors Corp. emerged from Chapter 11 on July 10, 2009, and Motors Liquidation's Chapter 11 case number is 09-50026.

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