Rico // Current

Nigeria: Shell to Face Trial in U.S. Over Saro-Wiwa

Oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, will go on trial in the United States on February 9, 2009 for alleged complicity in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, THISDAY has learned.

The case entitled Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Shell and Wiwa v Anderson concerns the November 10, 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Movement of the Emancipation of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) known as "Ogoni Nine" and the shooting of a woman protesting the bulldozing of her farm by Shell in preparation for a pipeline project.

After several years of litigation, Judge Kimba Wood ruled that the trial would he held next year.

According to documents made available by EarthRights International, one of the counsel, Shell was engaged in "acts of oppression" against peaceful opposition to the company's environmental damage and human rights abuses in the Ogoni area.

THISDAY gathered that the plaintiff's action was brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and alleges violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO).

The defendants dismissed the complaints on grounds of lack of personal jurisdiction over Royal Dutch/Shell and lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

According to the defendants, ACTA did not apply to a corporation and the claim was precluded by the political questions and act of state doctrines as well as Nigerian law on corporate liability. They also argued that the case should be heard in the Netherlands or England.

But on September 25, 1998, Judge Wood ruled that personal jurisdiction was appropriate in New York but also ruled that England was a more convenient forum and therefore that the defendant's motion to dismiss should be granted for forum non conveniens (Latin for "inconvenient forum" or "inappropriate forum").

Plaintiffs appealed to the US Court of Appeals for Second Circuit, arguing that a forum non conveniens dismissal would vitiate Congressional intent to allow plaintiffs claims to be heard in US courts.

Defendants cross-appealed the ruling personal jurisdiction. And the Court of Appeal on September 15, 2000 reversed the district court's forum non conveniens dismal, thereby concluding that the US was the proper forum.

The court further upheld the district court's ruling that jurisdiction over the defendants was proper.

Oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, will go on trial in the United States on February 9, 2009 for alleged complicity in human... more