The original lawsuits were brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows noncitizens to file cases in U.S. courts for human rights abuses occurring overseas. "… the plaintiffs are going to be compensated for the human rights violations they suffered," their attorney said.
Royal Dutch Shell will pay $15.5 million (£9.6 million) to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of colluding with Nigeria’s former military regime over the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other peaceful anti-oil protesters.
The suit, scheduled to be heard before a jury and Judge Kimba Wood in U.S. District Court in New York, claimed that Shell was complicit in the murder, torture, and other abuses committed by Nigeria's former military government in their effort to silence environmental activists in the country's oil-producing Ogoni region.
Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight others were members of the Ogoni ethnic group from the Niger Delta. They had been campaigning for the rights of the local people and protesting the pollution caused by the oil industry. Ken Saro-Wiwa’ s family said that his hanging followed a murder conviction concocted because of his outspoken criticism of Shell.
The activists' deaths sparked a storm of international protest.
The settlement came on the eve of a trial in Manhattan Federal Court that the families' lawyers promised would expose Shell's complicity in the ruthless effort by Nigerian security forces to stifle dissent during the mid-1990s.
The original lawsuits were brought under a 1789 U.S. statute, the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows noncitizens to file cases in U.S. courts for human rights abuses occurring overseas.
The act lay almost dormant until June 30, 1980, when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (1980) that U.S. courts had jurisdiction over a case where the international norm that was violated was the prohibition on torture.
A multinational company has never been found liable of human rights abuses by a U.S. jury, but a few have settled out of court.
This settlement came as the more than decade-long dispute was due to go to trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the victims' families who had brought the cases along with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
"We litigated with Shell for 13 years and, at the end of the day, the plaintiffs are going to be compensated for the human rights violations they suffered," Hoffman said.
Some $5 million of the payout will establish the Kiisi Trust to fund educational programs for Saro-Wiwa's Ogoni people.
"This settlement confirms that multinational corporations can no longer act with the impunity they once enjoyed," said Jennie Green, an attorney for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit.
Shell denied wrongdoing, but Malcolm Brinded, Shell's executive director for exploration and production, said the settlement "acknowledges that, even though Shell had no part in the violence that took place, the plaintiffs and others have suffered."
Sources:
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06/09/2009-06-09_shell_pays_15m_to_nigerians.html
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssEnergyNews/idUSN0834542320090608?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
Point of Law.com
http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2009/06/shell-settles-a.php
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8090493.stm