Overview
On April 21, 2022, the Center for Justice & Accountability, law professors of civil procedure, including Earth Rights International, and human and workers rights organizations, including Global Labor Justice – International Labor Rights filed three amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs petition for en banc review of the U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit February 25, 2022 decision affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants in Ratha, et al. v. Phatthana Seafood Co., Ltd., et al., an action brought under the civil remedy provision of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, 18 U.S.C. §1595, by Cambodian villagers who alleged that they were trafficked into Thailand and subjected to forced labor at seafood processing factories.
The Transnational Litigation blog takes a detailed look at the case in it’s post “Cert Petition Raises Personal Jurisdiction Question in Context of the TVPRA.”
Case Background
Victims of human trafficking in the multi-billion dollar seafood industry supply chain, which stretches from seafood packing factories in Thailand to supermarkets in the United States, today filed suit in California federal court.
The seven plaintiffs were recruited from their home villages in rural Cambodia to work at factories in Thailand producing shrimp and seafood for export to the United States. Instead of the good jobs at good wages they were promised, the five men and two women became victims of human trafficking, forced labor, involuntary servitude, and peonage, according to their attorneys.
The defendants sell their shrimp and seafood to large U.S. customers like Walmart and include California-based Rubicon Resources, LLC, and an affiliate, Wales & Co. Universe Ltd, as well as Thai corporations Phatthana Seafood and S.S. Frozen Food. The complaint states that the defendants were part of a joint venture that knowingly profited from trafficked labor in direct violation of both U.S. and international law.
“When they finally returned home, these men and women had nothing to show for their hard labor and their families were poorer than before,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, Cohen Milstein partner and lead attorney for the villagers. “Fortunately, in the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act, Congress gave trafficked workers the tools they need to obtain justice when companies knowingly profit from forced labor in their supply chains.” The United State Government Trafficking in Persons Report, human rights organizations and international organizations have long highlighted the problems of trafficking and forced labor at the Thai shrimp and seafood factories that are part of the multi-billion dollar seafood supply chain.
“What happened to me was wrong,” said plaintiff Keo Ratha. “I filed this suit so companies would think twice before exploiting trafficked workers in the future and to help the workers who were exploited with me.”
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act authorizes victims of human trafficking to pursue a remedy against whoever knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in an act of trafficking or forced labor.
In the case of the Cambodian villagers, each paid high recruitment fees to obtain jobs in Thailand. Several mortgaged family farmland and went deep into debt to finance the fees and travel costs, expenses they planned to repay with the promised wages. But when they arrived at the Thai factory, the villagers learned that they would be paid less than promised and that their already meager wages would be further reduced by unexpected salary deductions for housing, fees, and other charges.
Furthermore, the men and women worked long hours in harsh conditions and were packed into crowded housing with inadequate sanitation facilities. When the villagers sought to leave the factory and return home, they were not permitted to do so. Instead, their passports were withheld and they were ordered to pay off the “fees they had incurred”—a condition made difficult, if not impossible, by the reduced pay and unexpected deductions. For example, one plaintiff, Phan Sophea, stated he was unable to return home for his mother’s funeral because he could not afford to ransom his passport back.
Some of the workers did not make enough money to afford food, even when working more than eight hours a day six days a week. For example, villager Yem Ban stated he was reduced to scavenging for fish along the beach and vegetables left in the fields after harvest.
When they were allowed to return home, the villagers had nothing to show for their hard labor or, worse, lost the farmland they had used as collateral to pay the job recruiters, driving their families deeper into poverty. One villager, Phan Sophea, who lost his farmland, states that he and his family now often go hungry. Another, Sem Kosal, said he now is unable to pay school fees for his son and could not afford to buy medicine when his children were ill.
A leader in international human rights litigation, Cohen Milstein’s Human Rights Group has been at the forefront of human trafficking cases in the U.S. Agnieszka Fryszman of Cohen Milstein is joined by co-counsel Dan Stormer and Mary Tanagho Ross of Hadsell Stormer & Renick, Paul Hoffman of Schonbrun Seplow Harris & Hoffman and Anthony Dicaprio.