The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal by 19 Nigerians seeking to invoke a US anti-torture law to sue oil giant Chevron over deaths in the Niger Delta.
The decision by the top US court not to intervene follows its unanimous finding last week that the law — the Torture Victim Protection Act — only allows lawsuits against individuals, not against corporations or organizations.
The finding lets stand a federal appeals court ruling in San Francisco that threw out the suit by the Nigerian demonstrators.
The plaintiffs claimed that they and their loved ones suffered deaths and injuries at the hands of Nigerian military personnel who used brutal force to crack down on an offshore oil platform protest in the Niger Delta in 1998.
The plaintiffs in the case, Bowoto, alleged that Chevron’s Nigeria subsidiary backed the military action and that the US parent company should be held liable.
The human rights case went to trial in a US federal court in San Francisco in October 2008. Brought under the Alien Tort Statute, the suit seeks to hold Chevron accountable for serious human rights violations committed in Nigeria.
Chevron was charged with egregious human rights abuses arising from its complicity with the notorious Nigerian military and “kill and go” mobile police against members of the Ilaje community of the Niger Delta. The Ilaje were protesting environmental and economic damage caused by Chevron’s oil producing activities in their community.