Monitoring Potential Foreign Litigation Problem (Potential Foreign vs US Litigation)

This is a problem to be assigned to a group to resolve and report back. Imagine that you are now the general counsel of a multinational natural resources company headquartered in the US with assets and operations in twenty countries. Your job is to keep your company-client out of trouble, hopefully proactively. How do you address US versus foreign legal exposure issues, both in substantive terms and in litigation forum terms? If you as junior lawyer were tasked to monitor the Corporate Legal Accountability Portal for your General Counsel boss, what do you tell him or her? As sample, if you want to see how it is being done now by Freeport after the fact, see their corporate website at Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold, Inc. (note where all they do business and look particularly at the sustainability tab under operations). But what do you think, is “sustainable development” reaching all the way back to the Brundtland Report? And are courts your enterprise’s only concern and audience, as witnessed by the Norwegian Petroleum Fund’s divestment decision?

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