Tracing Liability Across Borders: The Evolving Role of Litigation and Reporting in Supply Chain Accountability

In recent years, a wave of lawsuits has begun to redefine how U.S. courts approach allegations of forced labour and human rights abuses in global supply chains. From seafood to technology, plaintiffs are increasingly invoking the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorisation Act (TVPRA) and the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) to argue that corporations can bear civil liability for abuses that occur beyond U.S. borders but within the reach of their commercial influence. Cases against Bumble Bee Foods and Phatthana Seafood offer a viewpoint into how this legal and civic landscape is evolving.  

The November 2025 decision in Akhmad v. Bumble Bee Foods [1] marks a notable shift. By rejecting Bumble Bee’s motion to dismiss, the California district court accepted that US-based companies can face TVPRA claims for alleged forced labour occurring overseas if there are sufficient domestic ties and evidence of knowing benefit. Crucially, the court relied on NGO reports – particularly from Greenpeace East Asia and Southeast Asia – to find that Bumble Bee “knew or should have known” about systemic labour abuses within its tuna supply chains. In doing so, the court treated civil-society research not merely as advocacy but as actionable knowledge relevant to corporate culpability.   

The Phatthana case, however, reminds us where this trajectory began, and where it still falters. On June 15, 2016, seven Cambodian villagers filed a lawsuit under the TVPRA after being trafficked into forced labour at Thai seafood factories supplying U.S. importers. Despite extensive evidence and NGO reporting corroborating the abuses, the case was dismissed and appeals denied [2], leaving the situation unresolved after nearly a decade. At the time, courts were cautious about extending jurisdiction and sceptical of linking U.S. buyers to foreign abuses. Viewed in hindsight, Phatthana exposed gaps that Bumble Bee now begins to close: clearer recognition of beneficiary liability, greater weight given to NGO evidence, and judicial acceptance of the idea that transnational commerce can carry transnational responsibility.   

The connective thread across these cases is the synergy between litigation and civil society knowledge. NGOs serve as both early-warning systems and evidentiary engines – documenting worker testimonies [2], tracing corporate footprints [3], and maintaining public pressure across borders [4]. Reports from Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, and local unions such as Indonesia’s SBMI do more than inform; they are increasingly shaping how courts determine “knowledge”. This blending of investigative activism with legal accountability reflects a deeper systemic change: the democratisation of knowledge production in transnational justice.   

Taken together, these lawsuits suggest that U.S. courts are edging toward a more integrated view of corporate responsibility – one that recognises the blurred boundaries between domestic profit and foreign harm. Yet the distance between litigation and remedy remains wide. Success now hinges not only on the law but on partnerships between lawyers, researchers, and worker-led organisations that can sustain these complex cases through years of procedural resistance.   

Next week’s post will examine how these evolving roles of NGOs and the changing civic space surrounding them are reshaping strategies to defend workers’ rights and expand accountability in global labour systems.