NEW YORK — Ford Motor Co and IBM Corp will again have to face a US lawsuit claiming they encouraged race-based human rights abuses in apartheid-era South Africa, despite a series of recent court decisions limiting the right to pursue such cases. Reviving a 12-year-old lawsuit, US District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan accepted an argument from a group of plaintiffs that corporations may be held liable under a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), that lets non-US citizens pursue some cases in US courts over alleged violations of international law. “No principle of domestic or international law supports the conclusion that the norms enforceable through the ATS ... apply only to natural persons and not to corporations,” Scheindlin wrote. — Reuters