On September 24, EarthRights International (ERI) and its co-counsel filed a petition for rehearing to a federal appeals court in Bowoto v. Chevron Corp. On September 10, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal in the Bowoto case, in which ERI represents Nigerian villagers who were shot and tortured after protesting on a Chevron offshore oil platform…The petition for rehearing focuses primarily on the court's decision that corporations cannot be sued under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), a 1992 federal statute that allows suits against those responsible for torture and extrajudicial killings…ERI asked the three-judge panel to reconsider its own decision, and also asked the entire court to examine the case "en banc," before a larger panel of eleven judges.