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…[It is a] potentially precedent-setting, test of company liability for injuries to foreign nationals at the hands of a foreign government...The suit...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. [also refers to Shell]