A/HRC/8/16 page 16 abuses.42 These claims tend not to be based on international law and are unlikely to be labelled as “human rights” cases as such, but rather will allege liability for failure to comply with basic non-criminal law tenets. 53. Accordingly, the legal inquiry applying in such cases can differ from the examination in international criminal law described above. Even where the inquiry is similar, such as where the court essentially looks at knowledge and assistance requirements, the specific elements of those requirements may differ. For example, in the context of negligence, proving knowledge might require showing only that the company should have known that it was taking a foreseeable risk of contributing to an abuse as opposed to needing to prove that there was actual knowledge. This is known as a reasonableness test, simply put, would a reasonable person have appreciated that there was a risk of contributing to abuse and have changed their behaviour to avoid the risk?43 This inquiry may not be posed as a knowledge test but rather a question as to whether the company acted in accordance with the requisite standard of care.44 C. Social expectations that companies avoid complicity 54. While legal standards, particularly those from international criminal law, are useful for understanding complicity, they are only part of the story. In non-legal contexts, corporate complicity has become an important benchmark by which other social actors judge companies. The avoidance of complicity features in international standards and principles set for business behaviour by, for example, the Global Compact. Likewise, public and private investors and human rights advocacy organizations also judge companies based on alleged indirect involvement in human rights abuses. 42 For commentary on a selection of cases, see Jennifer A. Zerk, Multinationals and Corporate Social Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Chap. 5. 43 Ibid., Zerk provides that “in identifying the substantive obligations of the parent company, the courts will take account of the general state of knowledge about the risks posed by the particular industry, process or technology and how to minimize them. To this end, home state regulatory requirements, codes of conduct, industry ‘best practice’, safety cases and risk control manuals are likely to be important sources of evidence” (pp. 220-221). 44 For instance in Lubbe v. Cape plc [2000] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 139, which concerned parent company liability for harm caused by a subsidiary, the plaintiff alleged that the parent company’s negligence consisted of instructions and advice it gave or failed to give its subsidiaries in following health and safety practices. It was alleged that “the instructions and advice … showed a careless disregard for the foreseeable risk of injury to those who were closely affected by the asbestos operations in South Africa, taking account of the knowledge which they [defendant company’s directors and senior employees] had or ought to have had of the health risks involved” (p. 146). (The case settled so this argument was not decided on its merits.)