Business Week | By Paul Magnusson | April 1, 2002
When a Mississippi jury slapped a $ 500 million judgment on Loewen Group, a Canadian funeral-home chain, in 1995 for breaching a contract with a hometown rival, the company quickly settled the case for $ 129 million but then decided to appeal. But instead of going to a U.S. court, the Canadians took their case to an obscure three-judge panel that stands distinctly apart from the U.S. legal system. And that panel's decision cannot be appealed.
Thanks to some fine print in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the case of Loewen Group vs. the U.S. is just one of two dozen wending their way through a little-known and highly secretive process. The panels, using arbitration procedures established by the World Bank, were supposed to ensure that governments in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would pay compensation to any foreign investor whose property they might seize. U.S. business groups originally demanded the investor-protection mechanism, noting that the Mexican government had a history of nationalizing its oil, electricity, and banking industries, including many U.S. assets. But even some of NAFTA's strongest supporters say that clever and creative lawyers in all three countries are rapidly expanding the anti-expropriation clause in unanticipated ways. ''The question in a lot of these pending cases is, will the panels produce a pattern of decisions that the negotiators never envisioned?'' says Charles E. Roh Jr., deputy chief U.S. negotiator for NAFTA, now a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLC. Some of the early indications, he says, ''are troubling.''
In one case, a NAFTA panel issued an interpretation of the Mexican Constitution, an authority the NAFTA negotiators hadn't intended to give the panel. In the dispute, a California waste disposal company, Metalclad Corp., was awarded $ 16.7 million by a NAFTA tribunal after the governor of the state of San Luis Potosi and a town council refused the company a permit to open a toxic waste site. The company had asked for $ 90 million in damages, insisting that the state and local governments had overstepped their authority.
The majority of the cases are yet to be decided, but the NAFTA panels are controversial nonetheless. For one thing, they are already pitting environmentalists and federal, state, and local government regulators in all three countries against multinationals. The basic disagreement: Business groups want to include NAFTA'S strongest investor-protection provisions in all future free-trade agreements, while many environmentalists would like to scrap the entire procedure as an impediment to government regulatory action. The cases are also complicating efforts to negotiate free-trade agreements with Chile and the hemispheric, 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Washington's problem: While such panels may favor U.S. businesses abroad, foreign plaintiffs would enjoy the same such privileges in the U.S. And that could end up giving them protections against regulations far beyond those domestic companies enjoy in their own courts. What's more, states and municipalities have also warned that their ability to govern is being compromised by ''a new set of foreign investor rights.''
In some cases, the NAFTA suits seek damages for government decisions that are clearly legal but can be questioned under vague notions of international law. For example, a Canadian chemical company, Methanex Corp., bypassed U.S. courts to challenge California's ban on a health-threatening gasoline additive, MTBE, that has been polluting municipal wells and reservoirs. In its $ 970 million claim, the Canadian company said California Governor Gray Davis had been influenced in his decision by a $ 150,000 campaign contribution from U.S.-based Archer Daniels Midland Co., the maker of a rival gasoline additive. The campaign contribution was legal, but Methanex' lawyers argued that the Davis decision was ''palpably unfair and inequitable'' because of ADM's influence. Such an argument wouldn't likely work in a U.S. court.
No laws can be overturned by the panel, but the cost of defending against a NAFTA lawsuit may run so high that it could still deter agencies from imposing strict regulations on foreign companies, critics charge. They point to a decision by Canada not to restrict cigarette marketing after Ottawa was threatened with a NAFTA case by U.S. tobacco companies. In another potentially intimidating move, United Parcel Service Inc. is seeking $ 160 million in damages from Canada, arguing that the state-owned Canadian postal system, Canada Post, maintains a monopoly on first-class mail and delivers parcels with private Canadian partners.
But right now, the Loewen case is the one in the spotlight. The Mississippi trial was so theatrical that Warner Bros. Inc. and film director Ron Howard have acquired the movie rights, according to attorneys in the case. Canadian funeral chain founder Ray Loewen was vilified as a foreigner, a ''gouger of grieving families,'' an owner of a large yacht, a racist, a customer of foreign banks, and greedy besides, according to the transcript. Yet the State Supreme Court refused to waive the appeal bond, which had been set at $ 625 million -- to be posted in 10 days. (The largest previous verdict in the state had been $ 18 million.) Loewen filed for bankruptcy protection in 1999 but is hopeful that the imminent NAFTA ruling will revive the company.
Although many of the current cases raise questions, business groups insist that NAFTA-like panels are needed in all trade deals because so many developing nations have poor judicial systems. But they allow that the process may still need some tweaking. ''Of course, if I look at the filed cases so far, I could write a pretty scary story,'' says Scott Miller, a Washington lobbyist for Procter & Gamble Co. And Eric Biehl, a former top Commerce Dept. official, who supports NAFTA, wonders, ''how does some mechanism on a trade agreement that no one ever thought much about suddenly get used to open up a whole new appellate process around the U.S. judicial system?'' That's a question a lot more people may soon be asking.
A Growing Caseload A sampling of the NAFTA panel's docket UPS OF AMERICA VS. CANADA UPS claims that Canada Post, the state-owned postal system, uses its monopoly on letter mail to gain an unfair advantage in parcel deliveries LOEWEN GROUP VS. U.S. Canadian funeral home chain says a Mississippi jury erred in awarding $500 million to a local funeral home operator in a contract breach case METHANEX VS. U.S. The Canadian manufacturer of a gasoline additive sued after California found the health-threatening chemical had contaminated water, and banned its use METALCLAD VS. MEXICO U.S. company sued after it obtained permits from the Mexican federal government for a waste disposal site, then localities denied a permit to operateBusiness Week:
