The huge oil group Chevron has been cleared by a US jury of complicity in violence that erupted on one of its platforms in Nigeria in May 1998.
The charges related to disturbances in which dozens of Nigerians, protesting about environmental damage caused by the oil industry, occupied Chevron’s Parabe platform nine miles off the Nigerian coast.
The lawsuit was brought by one of the protesters, Larry Bowoto, who was injured when a local police unit, called in by the company, stormed the platform. Two protesters were killed and several others injured.
Bowoto had claimed Chevron was liable, among other things, for cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, assault, battery and negligence. However, last month a San Francisco court rejected the charges in a case that had been monitored closely by other oil companies operating in Nigeria. The plaintiffs, supported by the human rights pressure group EarthRights International, have said they will appeal.
The case had been brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a 1789 law that allows foreigners to sue US organizations for offences they are alleged to have committed abroad.
Until recently it had been unclear whether campaigners could use the Act to sue companies for human rights abuses abroad. However, the first completed Alien Tort trial against a corporation – the US coal mining company Drummond – was heard in 2007 (EP9, issue 4, p6).
Both Drummond and now Chevron have been acquitted, but further Alien Tort cases, including actions against Chiquita, Coca-Cola, Firestone, Shell and Wal-Mart, are stacking up. Chevron also faces a second Alien Tort case over allegations that it has polluted the Amazon Basin.
Jonathan Drimmer, a partner with the US law firm Steptoe & Johnson, said he saw no reason to believe the Drummond and Chevron victories would ‘slow the trend’. Laura Livoti, founder of Justice in Nigeria Now, which had supported the action against Chevron, added that despite the latest defeat, campaigners were satisfied ‘that there is a clear pathway in the US court system for holding corporations accountable to the rule of law’.
Business interests and some lawyers, nevertheless, are concerned that the statute may be used by NGOs to gain publicity for wild allegations against high-profile companies.
Chevron said the recent case was groundless, as it had to call security forces to protect its staff. ‘While we sympathize with the challenges the people of the Niger Delta face every day, those challenges do not merit violence and hostage-taking for ransom,’ it said.
Chevron emphasized that it never intended that anyone on the platform should be harmed. It merely wanted the protesters removed.
A company spokesman also alleged that some US lawyers were now exploiting the Alien Tort Claims Act ‘in search of a fat payday’.