Chevron lawsuit (re Nigeria)
In 1999, a group of Nigerians of the Niger Delta region, where Chevron engages in oil
production activities, brought a lawsuit against Chevron in US federal court. The plaintiffs
allege that they suffered human rights violations, including torture and summary execution, at
the hands of the Nigerian military and police acting in concert with Chevron to suppress the
plaintiffs’ protests against Chevron’s environmental practices in the Niger Delta. The claims
against Chevron are based on two incidents. First, two protestors were shot by Nigerian military
and police allegedly recruited by Chevron at its Parabe offshore platform. Second, two Nigerian
villages, Opia and Ikenyan, were attacked by Nigerian soldiers using helicopters and boats
allegedly leased and/or owned by Chevron, and these attacks allegedly caused the death and
injury of a number of villagers. In March of 2007, a federal judge dismissed the federal
racketeering claims against Chevron, but the judge declined to dismiss the remaining nine claims
made by the plaintiffs. In August of 2007, a federal judge issued a series of decisions regarding
Chevron's motions for summary judgment. The judge's orders narrowed the lawsuit,but the
plaintiffs' central claims regarding Chevron's complicity in human rights violations were allowed
to stand. The trial commenced in San Francisco in late October 2008.
- "US judge lets Chevron Nigeria lawsuit continue", Reuters, 16 Aug 2007
- "Chevron wins partial dismissal in Nigeria case", Associated Press, 14 Mar 2007
- “New Document Alleges Tie Between Chevron and Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria”,
William Baue, SocialFunds.com, 12 Aug 2005
- “Chevron Paid Nigerian Troops After Alleged Killings”, David R. Baker, San Francisco
Chronicle, 04 Aug 2005
- “ChevronTexaco Going To Trial”, Karen Gullo, Bloomberg News, 26 Mar 2004
- Chevron: Bowoto v. Chevron - Hostage Taking Incident in Nigeria
- Center for Constitutional Rights [plaintiffs’ counsel]: Bowoto v. Chevron [case synopsis]
- Earthrights International [plaintiffs’ counsel]: Bowoto v. ChevronTexaco [includes links to
certain court documents]
Trial gets underway in human rights case
against Chevron
The oil company is accused of colluding with the Nigerian military in the breakup of a protest on an oil rig
that left two people dead in 1998.
By Richard Paddock
9:47 PM PDT, October 28, 2008
Reporting from San Francisco -- Opening statements began Tuesday in a trial over whether Chevron
Corp. colluded with the Nigerian military in 1998, when troops broke up a protest at an offshore oil rig,
killing two villagers.
The suit was brought under a federal law that allows foreigners to sue American companies for alleged
human rights violations in other countries. The case in U.S. District Court is being closely watched by
human rights advocates seeking to hold U.S. corporations accountable for their actions overseas.
In court Tuesday, attorney Dan Stormer argued on behalf of his Nigerian clients that San Ramon, Calif.based Chevron used company helicopters to fly "notoriously brutal" Nigerian troops to the oil platform,
where they killed and injured unarmed protesters. Other protesters were arrested and tortured, Stormer
contended.
"Chevron paid, housed, fed, transported and supervised the military and police," Stormer told the ninemember jury.
But Chevron attorney Bob Mittelsteadt countered that the protesters had held workers at the oil rig
hostage for more than three days and that the company was obligated to call in the authorities to protect
its employees.
"It was the right decision," he said. "It was the decision anyone being kept hostage would want the
company to make."
In their opening remarks, the two attorneys presented contrasting versions of the events that took place in
May 1998.
Stormer, representing 19 Nigerians who were injured or lost a family member in the clash, portrayed the
villagers as peaceful people who were upset by ecological damage to their Niger Delta villages and were
seeking jobs from the oil company.
He said that Chevron's oil operations in the delta had destroyed the fishery, contaminated wells and killed
fruit trees. Many villagers of the Ilaje ethnic group were unemployed. "They were watching the community
die," he said.
The Ilaje villagers sent numerous letters to Chevron seeking a meeting, but the company ignored them,
Stormer said. In early 1998, a rival ethnic group occupied a Chevron oil platform and negotiated jobs for
some of its members. Soon after, the Ilaje decided to do the same.
More than 100 men went to the Parabe oil platform and, according to Stormer's account, were invited
aboard an adjoining tugboat and a barge that housed employees. The men were peaceful and posed no
threat to the workers as elders onshore negotiated for jobs with the oil company, he said.
On the fourth day, three helicopters leased by Chevron and flown by Chevron pilots flew Nigerian troops
to the barge. Stormer said they immediately began firing tear gas and bullets.
Villager Larry Bowoto, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, approached the soldiers shouting, "Don't shoot. We
are peaceful. Don't shoot," Stormer recounted. Bowoto was shot in the elbow, side and backside.
One protester who was killed left three widows and 11 children. The family members are among those
suing, and the three widows sat together in court Tuesday.
Some of the protesters were arrested and held in deplorable conditions, Stormer said. One was hung by
the arms. Another was beaten as authorities attempted to get him to confess that he was a sea pirate, the
attorney said.
After the incident, he said, Chevron attempted to cover up its role by claiming that the troops were not on
its payroll.
Mittelsteadt, the Chevron attorney, told the jury: "This is an emotional case." But he characterized the
protest as an unlawful occupation of company facilities.
Some of the "invaders" had knives, he said, and some workers feared for their lives. Protesters poured
diesel fuel on the barge and threatened to set it on fire, he said.
"This was not a peaceful protest," he said. "It was a hostile illegal invasion that put the workers' lives at
risk."
His comments to the jury contradicted a fax sent by a company official on the third day of the protest
saying that the villagers were unarmed and that the situation had remained calm.
Mittelsteadt acknowledged that it was a common practice for Chevron and other foreign companies
operating in Nigeria to pay police and soldiers to supplement their salaries, but said that did not make
them company employees.
The trial is expected to last into December.
Paddock is a Times staff writer.
richard.paddock@latimes.com
Chevron faces suit over Nigerian violence
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Larry Bowoto's left arm is still scarred and numb where a soldier's bullet struck it in 1998
while he was aboard a Chevron oil platform in Nigeria. During the course of the incident,
Bowoto was shot several more times, another man was wounded and yet another was killed.
On Monday, in only the second trial of its kind, a federal jury will convene in San Francisco
to decide whether Bowoto and his companions were violent hostage takers or innocent
victims - and whether a U.S. corporation, whose foreign subsidiary summoned the security
forces, is responsible for the bloodshed.
"I'm not a violent person," Bowoto, 44, said through an interpreter during a recent Bay Area
visit. "We were peaceful protesters" who "never expected Chevron to be so brutal."
Chevron denies claim
The San Ramon oil company paints a different picture: Bowoto, the company says, led a
group of armed men who seized the platform, demanding jobs and money, and held 200
employees captive during three days of fruitless negotiations before Chevron's Nigerian
subsidiary - Chevron Nigeria Ltd. - called for military help.
"This is a case of right versus wrong, legal versus illegal, peaceful negotiation versus violent
extortion," Chevron said in a statement.
In May, after Bowoto appeared at Chevron's shareholders' meeting and said the company
"must give up violence as a way of doing business," CEO David O'Reilly called his remarks
"outrageous" and said Bowoto was guilty of "a criminal act."
Nineteen plaintiffs, including Bowoto, accuse Chevron of colluding with a notoriously
violent military force to quell the protest. The case represents a 21st century application of
one of the nation's oldest laws, the Alien Tort Claims Act.
Passed by the first Congress in 1789, the law lets foreigners file damage claims in U.S. courts
for international human rights violations anywhere in the world. Originally focused on sea
piracy, the law took on new life with rulings in the 1980s that allowed survivors of foreign
torture to sue military leaders who entered the United States.
A 2004 Supreme Court ruling limited the law's scope to the most serious abuses of
internationally accepted legal standards but left the door open for suits against
multinational companies that allegedly collaborate with repressive governments.
In the only such case to go to trial, a federal jury in Alabama last year absolved the
Drummond coal company of responsibility for the killings of three union leaders by
paramilitary forces in Colombia. Judges have dismissed several other suits, under the
Supreme Court's stringent standard, and a few have been settled.
Unocal settled Burma suit
A suit against Unocal by Burmese villagers, who blamed the company for forced labor, rape
and torture by soldiers at a natural gas pipeline, was scheduled for trial in Los Angeles in
2005, but the company settled it for an undisclosed amount of money. A suit similar to
Bowoto's, filed against Royal Dutch Shell by Nigerians including relatives of Ken SaroWiwa, a writer and activist hanged by the military regime in 1995, is scheduled to go to trial
in New York in February.
"Courts have been vigilant in allowing only the most well-founded cases to go forward," said
attorney Marco Simons of the nonprofit advocacy group EarthRights International, a lawyer
for the plaintiffs. A victory in this case, he said, would send a message to corporations
operating abroad that "if they are complicit in human rights abuses, they can expect to be
held accountable."
Chevron, while maintaining the villagers' claims are unfounded, also says that the 1789 law
"provides a financial incentive to attack U.S.-based corporations with international
operations" and that the plaintiffs "are using the U.S. courts to intervene in Nigerian
affairs."
The events date from May 1998, when members of the Ilaje tribe in the Niger Delta went to
Chevron Nigeria's Parabe platform, 9 miles off the Atlantic coast, to protest the company's
employment practices, and what they described as the destruction of fresh water, farm lands
and fishing by oil drilling and dredging.
"It now takes four or five hours to find any usable water," Bowoto said in his recent
interview with The Chronicle, describing the conditions that he said still exist. "It takes days
to find any significant fish. The same thing has happened to farming."
Threat of 'mass riot'
Chevron, in court papers and public statements, described the protesters as a group of
"armed youths" carrying machetes, knives and clubs and demanding jobs and money. The
company cited letters from "Concerned Ilaje Citizens," including Bowoto, to Chevron earlier
that month warning that refusal to allocate jobs fairly "could lead to mass riot" and asking,
"Which language do you understand? Is it violence or sea piracy, war or peace?"
But plaintiffs' lawyers have a faxed message sent by a company official to the U.S. Embassy
on the third day of the protest, describing the villagers as unarmed and saying the situation
"has remained calm since their arrival."
Soldiers arrived the next morning on helicopters leased from Chevron. One villager, Arolika
Irowarinum, was shot to death. Two men were wounded - Bowoto, who was shot several
times, and Bassey Jeje. A fourth man, Bola Oyimbo, allegedly was beaten and tortured, and
later died of unrelated causes.
Chevron says its subsidiary was simply reporting a crime when it contacted security forces
and had no reason to anticipate violence. The plaintiffs counter that the company was well
aware of the soldiers' violent reputation and approved the plan that led to the attack.
Those are factual disputes that a jury must resolve, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said in
a pretrial ruling. She said jurors also must decide whether Chevron's control over its
subsidiary was so extensive that it should be held responsible for any wrongdoing.
The trial is scheduled to last five weeks.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/26/BU9I13LS5Q.DTL
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Law.com
Corporate Liability Key in Chevron Case
Monday October 20, 3:02 am ET
Pamela A. MacLean, The National Law Journal
An epic legal battle going to trial in federal court in San Francisco this week will ask jurors to decide whether oil
giant Chevron Corp. sanctioned human rights abuses that killed and wounded protesters at its Nigerian
facilities, or was simply protecting its employees from belligerent kidnappers.
The decade-long legal fight has produced a 2,000-item court docket with mountains of paper in what may
become a rare, and potentially precedent-setting, test of company liability for injuries to foreign nationals at the
hands of a foreign government.
"We are trying to hold a corporation liable for their bad actions in another country, even if it is committed by
their surrogates, a wholly owned subsidiary or by the brutal Nigerian government regime," said Dan Stormer of
Hadsell, Stormer, Keeny, Richardson & Renick in Pasadena, Calif., representing a group of Nigerians who
were injured during protests on a Chevron offshore oil platform in 1998.
Chevron attorney Robert Mittelstaedt of the San Francisco office of Jones Day in paints an entirely different
picture.
"What we are trying to establish is that a company has a right to report criminal conduct in a country where it is
operating," he said. "And it has a right to assistance from those officials to assist its workers. Their theory is
that Chevron should be liable because it reported crime. If that was the law, it would be hard to provide
protection in Nigeria, where the only ones who can bear arms are official law enforcement," he said.
The suit, Bowoto v. Chevron, No. C99-2506SI (N.D. Calif.), alleges that Chevron, in conjunction with the
Nigerian military, engaged in torture, assaults and the killing of two protesters over Chevron's environmental
record and failure to hire locals in the delta region near its oil drilling operations.
The protesters, allegedly led by Larry Bowoto, took boats to an offshore barge and platform where the two
sides dispute whether it was an attempt at peaceful protest or an effort to hold Chevron workers hostage and
extort ransom.
The case is one of a handful in recent years that have used a 200-year-old law, created originally to redress the
victims of piracy at sea, and known as the Alien Tort Claims Act. A body of law has developed that allows
people injured in other countries to seek redress in U.S. courts. Royal Dutch Shell Co. faces a similar trial in the
Southern District of New York on Feb. 9, 2009, in a pair of cases charging it with human rights violations and
racketeering in Nigeria. That lawsuit contends that Shell was complicit in the deaths of Ken Saro-Wiwa and
others who the suit says were engaged in nonviolent protest against Shell's environmental record in Nigeria.
Saro-Wiwa was hanged in Nigeria in 1995 by the government. The suit alleges torture, detention, forced exile
of some protesters and the shooting of others.
Mittelstaedt said that whether the Alien Tort Claims Act applies in Chevron's case to the ways the plaintiffs are
trying to use it has not been decided by U.S. courts. "In our view, international law imposes duties on
governments, not duties on private actors," he said.
Ed Scott, Chevron vice president of negotiations and legal general counsel for Chevron Global Upstream and
Gas, described the events in 1998. Chevron got a crisis team to the area and it was believed "if the navy went
out it would be a peaceful resolution," he said.
But, he said, the day the navy boarded the barge, the protesters' boats were gone, leaving them without a way
to leave. "Some [protesters] charged the navy and [the navy] resisted," Scott said.
Sola Omole, a Nigerian and Chevron manager for international government relations in Washington, said he
was at the platform in 1998. He said traditionally contractors negotiate with surrounding communities for jobs.
Omole said they got "threatening letters from Bowoto that we had to negotiate with him."
On the barge, Bowoto and the protesters "held 150 people hostage for three days. On the fourth day we
contacted government security forces. We hoped to negotiate and resolve it," Omole said.
Stormer disputed the account. "It is uncontested and uncontestable that [Bowoto and the protesters] represent
the community around jobs and environmental destruction. They went to the platform to find some resolution."
"They sent repeated requests to sit down with Chevron. Chevron ignored it," Stormer said.
He said Chevron offered "ghost jobs," essentially payment for phony jobs, to quiet local opposition. The
protesters also opposed a dredging operation that allowed salt water intrusion into the river, killing fish and
crops and forcing locals to travel long distances for work.
"The only contest is the means by which they were killed and wounded," said Stormer.
The flurry of legal motions on both sides has included such oddities as a plaintiffs' motion to exclude mention of
the protesters allegedly bringing, instead of weapons, a "juju man," charms and witchcraft to the barge and
platform, which Chevron wanted to introduce to show that the plaintiffs were allegedly using them to intimidate
the Nigerian platform workers.
The trial is expected to last four to five weeks and have as many as 60 witnesses.
Shell to Face Trial in US over Saro-Wiwa
From Constance Ikokwu in Washington, D.C., 10.09.2008
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 learnt.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...
Royal Dutch Shell to go to Trial for Complicity in Torture and Murder of Nigerian
Protesters
New York, October 8, 2008 — Yesterday, Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York set a trial date of February 9, 2009 for a human rights and racketeering case against the Royal Dutch
Shell company (Shell) and the head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson. The case was first filed in 1996. The
judge rejected Shell’s attempt to file additional legal motions to postpone a trial date.
“We are looking forward to finally bringing Shell into court, where we will prove their role in the torture and
murder of our clients and their pattern of human rights abuses,” said CCR attorney Jennie Green. “It's time for our
clients and their families to see justice.”
Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum and Wiwa v. Anderson are two lawsuits filed by the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) and co-counsel from EarthRights International on behalf of relatives of murdered activists who were
fighting for human rights and environmental justice in Nigeria. The cases charge the corporation and this key
official for their complicity in the November 10, 1995 hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other leaders in the
nonviolent opposition to Shell’s pattern of human rights abuses and environmental destruction: John Kpuinen,
Saturday Doobee, Daniel Gbokoo, Felix Nuate, and Dr. Barinem Kiobel. The cases also include charges for the
torture, detention, and forced exile of Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s brother, Dr. Owens Wiwa, and Michael Tema Vizor; and
the shooting of Karololo Kogbara and Uebari N-nah in two attacks on peaceful protestors.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr., the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, issued the following statement on behalf of his family:
Ken Saro Wiwa
The family and all those who have had their human rights abused in
resource bearing communities are humbled and greatly encouraged by
this news. It is a relief that after 12 years we have finally vindicated
Ken Saro-Wiwa's insistence that Shell will one day have its day in
court. We hope, ultimately, that this will reinforce the message that
non-violence and the rule of law are the foundations of true justice,
especially at a time when the unacceptable legacy of injustice poses a
clear and present danger to lives, the environment and energy
security in the Niger Delta and around the globe. We welcome the
decision of the judge and would like to express our sincere gratitude
to the Center for Constitutional Rights and other people of conscience
who have stayed the course.
The defendants are charged with complicity in human rights abuses against the Ogoni people in Nigeria, including
summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, wrongful death,
assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. The cases were brought under the Alien Tort Statute
(ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). The case against Royal Dutch/Shell also alleges that the
corporation violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Nigeria has been chief among Shell’s assets for many years. Critics charge that with the aim of production at any
cost, regardless of the damage to the surrounding people and land, Shell disrupted thousands of lives and wreaked
havoc on the environment. In the early 1990’s, the people of Nigeria began to protest. Shell made payments and
provided arms to security forces that they knew to be abusive to local communities. The military government
violently repressed the demonstrations and arrested and bribed witnesses. Nine leaders of the demonstrations
were murdered, including the aforementioned well-known activist and writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa.
In addition to CCR and ERI, the plaintiffs are represented by CCR cooperating attorneys Judith Brown Chomsky,
Anthony DiCaprio and Beth Stephens, and Paul Hoffman of Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris and Hoffman.
Media contacts: Jenn Nessel (212.614.6449, jnessel@ccrjustice.org ); Shonna Carter,
Riptide Communications (212.260.5000)
Related News: "Shell to Face Trial in US Over Saro-Wiwa" (ThisDay Online Nigerian News)
Shell lawsuit (re Nigeria)
In 1996, Royal Dutch/Shell was sued in US federal court by Ken Wiwa (son
of the late Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed in 1995) and
other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
(MOSOP). MOSOP campaigned against the environmental damage caused
by oil extraction in the Ogoni region of Nigeria and for increased autonomy
for the Ogoni ethnic group. Ken Saro-Wiwa and other members of MOSOP
were detained illegally in 1994, held incommunicado in military custody,
then tried by a special court established by the military government using
procedures in violation of international fair trial standards, convicted of
murder and executed. The plaintiffs allege that the Nigerian military
government and security forces committed human rights violations,
including torture and summary execution of MOSOP members, to suppress
MOSOP’s activities and that Royal Dutch/Shell was complicit in the
commission of these abuses. The case is currently in litigation; the plaintiffs
have won several pre-trial rulings, including on motions by the defendants to
dismiss the case. The trial is set to begin in February 2009.
- “NYC trial date for claims against Shell”, Larry Neumeister, Associated
Press, 9 Oct 2008
- “Shell Faces Human Rights Grilling”, Tim Webb, Independent [UK], 11 Apr
2004
- “Big Oil and an Activist's Death: Family Sues to Probe Role Played by Shell
in Nigerian's Execution”, Elizabeth Neuffer, Boston Globe, 03 Jun 2001
- Shell: Shell in Nigeria: Issues
- EarthRights International (NGO representing plaintiffs): Wiwa v. Royal
Dutch Petroleum (Shell) [includes links to court opinions and plaintiffs’
complaints filed in this case]
- Center for Constitutional Rights (NGO representing plaintiffs): Wiwa v.
Royal Dutch Petroleum [synopsis]