UK: Nigerian communities win key appeal; oil spill case against Shell proceeds to full trial
"Oil Spillage: Two Nigerian communities secure major legal victory against Shell in UK", 13 October 2024
The Court of Appeal decision cleared the way for the case presented by the Bile and Ogale communities of Rivers State to proceed to a full trial...
The communities... commenced the legal action in 2015 at a High Court in the United Kingdom to hold Shell accountable for decades of environmental devastation caused by oil spills.
The appellate court’s ruling delivered on Friday overturned a controversial decision made by a UK High Court in March that would have created an insurmountable legal hurdle for the plaintiffs, according to Leigh Day, a law firm committed to claimant-only cases ensuring that individuals have the same access to justice as the UK Government and large corporations.
More than 13,000 residents of Bille and Ogale had accused Shell of widespread pollution, claiming that repeated oil spills from the company’s infrastructure contaminated their lands, waterways, and drinking water.
The spills, they alleged, have rendered the land infertile and wiped out fish populations, leaving them unable to farm or fish—their primary sources of income.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the previous ruling treating the claimants’ case as a “global claim” because they have been unable to link particular areas of damage to individual oil spills. Global claim is a type of legal action only ever used in contractual disputes in the construction industry.
Under a global claim, the Bille and Ogale communities would have had to prove that Shell was responsible for 100 per cent of the pollution that has impacted their environment, according to Leigh Day...
Had the ruling been affirmed it would be a major stumbling block for future environmental claims, due to repeated incidents of pollution in future, unless they could prove the same polluter was responsible for all the pollution that has impacted them.
In overturning this decision, the Court of Appeal cleared the way for the case to proceed to a full trial, which will likely involve the disclosure of crucial internal Shell documents...