By PUI-WING TAM

The movement to make multinational companies liable in U.S. courts for human-rights violations abroad has reached the trial stage.

For the first time, a trial is scheduled to open in U.S. federal court this week over whether a U.S. company is accountable for alleged human-rights transgressions committed overseas. The case, in Birmingham, Ala., involves mining company Drummond Co. and its alleged collaboration with Colombian paramilitaries in 2001 to kill three mining-union leaders near a Drummond mine in La Loma, Colombia. Drummond has denied any role in the deaths of the union leaders. The case was featured in a page-one article1 in The Wall Street Journal in 2003.

The case heads several against large companies that turn on the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act. Originally enacted to combat seafaring pirates, the ATCA allows foreigners to sue in U.S. court for violations of an American treaty or international law. In recent years, human-rights groups and other activists have started using the law to bring cases against companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Bridgestone Corp., in an effort to police corporate behavior overseas.

The ATCA cases have sparked an outcry from business groups, who say the suits don't belong in the U.S. and that it is impractical for American courts to resolve murky disputes from thousands of miles away. Several of these corporate cases have proceeded, though none have gone to trial until now. In 2004, oil company Unocal Corp., which was facing trial in an ATCA case over alleged human-rights violations at a natural-gas pipeline in Myanmar, settled the claims. (Unocal has since been acquired by Chevron Corp.)

As a result, the Drummond case is viewed as a precedent-setter for how ATCA corporate cases will unfold at trial. "There's no doubt that this case is seen as a watershed," says Sandra Colliver at the Open Society Institute in New York. "This'll determine whether companies take these cases seriously."

The Drummond case was filed in 2002 by the families of the slain union leaders and their union. Lawyers from the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington, D.C., and the United Steelworkers union, among others, are trying the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. Terry Collingsworth, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, says the case is significant because "we have the credibility to say to other [companies] that we can take you to trial."

A spokesman for Drummond, a family-owned company based in Birmingham, didn't return calls seeking comment. Drummond's lead outside attorney on the case, William Jeffress, declined to comment. In a statement in March, Drummond said that it "emphatically rejects all charges" and that any outcome of the case "will be favorably settled in favor of the company and its executives."