[2] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed,[3] holding that corporations are liable for aiding and abetting slavery, in part because norms against slavery are "universal and absolute" and thus provide a basis for an ATS claim against a corporation; however, it did not address the argument by the defendant corporations that the complaint sought an extraterritorial application of the ATS, which the U.S. Supreme Court had recently rejected in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.[4] On remand, the district court again dismissed the claims, finding that the plaintiffs sought an impermissible extraterritorial application of the ATS.

[5] In the interim, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, which held that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the ATS.

The children, aged 12–14, were kept in harsh living conditions at the plantations, and they were forced under threat of violence to cultivate cocoa for up to fourteen hours per day without pay.

[9] Nestlé and Cargill encouraged the use of child slave labor on Côte d’Ivoire plantations by supporting farmers through capital investments in equipment, training, and cash advances.

The Ninth Circuit remanded this decision, stating that the plaintiffs had standing to sue under the Alien Tort Statute—but the case was again dismissed by the district court.