Today the Court of Appeal will hear an appeal on behalf of over 40,000 villagers from the Ogale and Bille communities from the Niger Delta in the latest stage of their legal battle against the oil giant Shell.

The villagers claim that they have been severely impacted by years of oil pollution from pipelines owned by Shell and that both the London based parent company, Royal Dutch Shell Plc., and its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, are responsible for the pollution. 

...Shell resists the villagers’ claims, arguing that the parent company has no responsibility for the pollution and that the claims should be heard in Nigeria rather than the UK.

...[A]ccording to law firm Leigh Day which is representing the communities, the High Court Judgment wrongly struck out the claims at an early stage in the litigation before all the relevant evidence was before the Court.