In overturning the Court of Appeal decision, the Supreme Court of England has ruled that two Nigerian communities can bring their legal claims for a cleanup and for compensation against oil company Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary in an English court.
The villagers, from the Ogale and Bille communities, say that they have been affected by oil pollution for years because of Shell’s operations in Nigeria, including the pollution of their drinking water. The villagers say that they have been fighting for five years to have their case heard in the English courts. They also say that there is no prospect of obtaining justice in Nigeria.
The Ogale community of about 40,000 people are mostly fishermen or farmers who rely on Ogoniland's waterways, but pollution has all but destroyed fishing, turning their home into a toxic wasteland.
The Niger Delta pollution has continued despite years of promises by successive governments in Nigeria to clean it up. In 2016 President Muhammadu Buhari launched an ambitious clean-up operation in Ogoniland. The work is ongoing but residents say little progress has been made.
The communities, represented by law firm Leigh Day, argued Shell owed a common law duty of care to individuals who had suffered serious harm as a result of the systemic health, safety and environmental failings of one of its overseas subsidiaries.
Shell did not dispute that both communities had been severely polluted by its oil, or that there was yet to be an adequate cleanup of the pollution. Instead, it argued that Royal Dutch plc could not be legally responsible for the harm caused to the communities, and so the cases should not be heard in England.
The Supreme Court held that the Court of Appeal erred when it said that Shell was not responsible for the harm caused by oil extraction in the Niger delta, because it was merely a holding company for Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC). It had also erred, the judges said, when it carried out a mini-trial of the facts before the disclosure of relevant documents.
The Supreme Court held that until further documents demonstrated an untrue or unsupportable claim, the proper determination should have been to accept the facts already displayed. The Court of Appeal could not assume that further documentation would be unlikely to assist.
Click here to read the full decision.