Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations in the English Courts: The Challenge of Jurisdiction

In recent decades, some jurisdictions have demonstrated a willingness to hear private negligence claims that allege the direct liability of parent companies for human rights violations perpetrated by overseas subsidiaries (“Tort Liability Claims”). These cases form part of an international effort aimed at establishing public control over the private operations of transnational corporations (“TNCs”). Their success in addressing the challenges of cross-border business operations, however, depends on the rules governing domestic courts’ power to adjudicate disputes. One of the consequences of globalisation is that the territorial focus of the adjudicative jurisdiction is often contrary to the transnational nature of the TNCs’ activities. This thesis examines how English courts should approach the jurisdictional analysis in Tort Liability Claims brought against English-domiciled parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries as co-defendants. In doing so, it seeks to make three principal contributions to the existing literature. First, it provides a comprehensive analysis of the jurisdictional problems currently faced by English courts in addressing questions surrounding the tort liability of TNCs. Second, it articulates why the assertion of jurisdiction by English courts over arguable claims against parent companies and the subsidiaries of English-based TNCs has normative force. Finally, it proposes a new framework which outlines how the implementation of the ‘economic enterprise’ theory could reinforce the jurisdictional analysis in Tort Liability Claims by providing a new connecting factor that allows for the assertion of jurisdiction over English-domiciled parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries as co-defendants when they operate as a single economic enterprise