Legal News

Another Jury to Decide: Is Giant Oil Company Liable for Nigeria Killings?

By Amir Efrati

Another year, another trial involving the Alien Tort Claims Act and deaths in oil-rich Nigeria.

In short, the act allows foreigners to file lawsuits in U.S. courts alleging international law violations. Of particular interest to the Law Blog are cases that target corporations, which rarely get their day in court.

In December, a federal jury cleared Chevron of responsibility for any human rights abuses during a violent protest on a company oil platform in Nigeria, finding that the Nigerian government was to blame for the deaths of protesters after the company called in the military to remove them.

This time, the defendant is Royal Dutch Shell. The claim: Royal Dutch Petroleum was complicit in the Nigerian government’s decision to execute nine oil-industry opponents in 1995 after they led demonstrations near the company’s drilling operations.

Relatives of seven of the deceased protesters, which include Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, filed suit in the U.S. in 1996, claiming Shell recruited Nigerian police and military to attack their villages and crush opposition to the company’s development, and that it later bribed witnesses to give false testimony against Saro-Wiwa and others who were convicted of murder and hanged based on fabricated evidence.

Shell, represented by Cravath, has said the suits are meritless, stating that it “in no way encouraged or advocated any act of violence” against critics of oil drilling. It insists that the former government of Nigeria, not Shell, was responsible for the executions, and says it unsuccessfully requested clemency for Saro-Wiwa and the others.

Barring a last-minute settlement, a federal jury in New York will be selected on Tuesday to hear the case. Here’s a curtain-raiser from the AP and a 2,300-word story from NYLJ, which includes a lengthy history lesson on the Alien Tort Claims Act, if that’s your kind of thing.

The alien tort law, originally passed in 1789, lay largely dormant until 1980. Jonathan C. Drimmer a Steptoe & Johnson partner who advises multinational companies on compliance with the alien tort law, told NYLJ that he expects to see more trials of this sort, “and I think one of them is going to wind up in a plaintiff’s verdict.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).