HIGH COURT BLOCKS SHELL OIL DEAL
The High Court in London has today blocked an agreement between the oil
giant Shell and the UK law firm CW Law in relation to over 7,000 claims of
Nigerians, which the Marble Arch based law firm claimed it represented, in a
dispute over oil spills in Nigeria.
Mr Justice Akenhead, the President of the Technological and Construction
Court blocked the deal and upheld an injunction against CW Law which prevents
them, or anyone representing them, to make contact the people of Bodo in
furtherance of the settlement agreement.
The judge made it clear that Leigh Day are proceeding with the case to
trial in the High Court next year and that many thousands of claimants are
entitled to damages under the Oil Pipelines Act which could be
substantial.
In today’s verdict, the judge also said there may have already been a
major breach of an existing interim injunction against CW Law. He said
that Leigh Day had strong evidence that representatives of CW Law had breached
the order by continuing to seek to sign up claimants whilst the order was in
place.
Leigh Day now has 3 working day to set out to the Court which breaches
of the order they would seek contempt proceedings on. CW Law will have 10
working days to respond and provide full evidence of the instructions they have
from claimants to represent them.
CW Law was accused, by law firm Leigh Day, of unlawfully entering into
settlement talks with Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) on behalf of
many villagers of Bodo, in the Niger Delta, who they didn’t represent and who
were not clients of the firm.
The settlement agreement between CW Law and Shell, given as evidence in
Court today, sought to settle the claims for £150 each with an additional £390
per claimant going into a Trust. The Agreement also included an
incentivised costs structure for CW Law which would see them paid more, by
Shell, the more claimants it signed up to the scheme.
With a population of 14,000 people, the great majority of the villagers
are represented by London based law firm Leigh Day in one of the largest
environmental legal cases in history following two massive oil spills in 2008
from pipelines operated by oil giant Shell.
Leigh Day has spent 3 years gathering witness statements and verifying
its list of clients on the ground, in Nigeria, to fight the case against Shell
in the UK Courts.
In August 2014 Leigh Day learned that SPDC had entered into a settlement
with CW Law, English Solicitors, who claimed to represent 7,400 of the
villagers.
Leigh Day, visited Bodo and spoke to the Chairman of the Council of
Chiefs & Elders in Bodo, the Chiefs of the Council and the Village Heads of
the 35 villages that make up Bodo and confirmed that they had not heard of CW
Law or the Nigerian lawyers Egbegi & Co, who claimed to be working with CW
Law.
Speaking after the judgment, the Senior Partner of Leigh Day, Martyn
Day, said:
"We are very pleased that the Judge agreed to block the deal
between Shell and CW Law as far as our clients are concerned.
"This paltry deal may have been lucrative to the lawyers involved
but it would have meant peanuts for those of our clients caught by
it. The Bodo Creek is damaged for decades to come. We will only resolve
the claims when Shell is prepared to pay properly for the damage it has
caused."
BACKGROUND
Shell is accused of two leaks from its pipelines in 2008/09, which
devastated the environment surrounding the community of Bodo*, in Gokana Local
Government Area, Rivers State, Nigeria.
Bodo is a fishing town. It sits in the midst of 90 sq km of mangroves
swamps and channels, which are the perfect breeding ground for fish and
shellfish.
The Bodo community is a rural coastal settlement consisting of 31,000
people who live in 35 villages. The majority of its inhabitants are
subsistence fishermen and farmers. Until the two 2008 spills Bodo was a
relatively prosperous town based on fishing. According to Leigh Day, the
spills have destroyed the fishing industry.
Expert evidence indicates 1,000 hectares of mangroves have been
destroyed by the spills and a further 5,000 hectares have been impacted.
The United Nations, Amnesty International and the Nigerian government
have all expressed deep disappointment with Shell’s lack of action in the
region. Impoverished local fishermen have been left without a source of
income, and have received no compensation.
The Ogoni fishing and farming communities have accused Shell of applying
different standards to clean-ups in Nigeria compared with the rest of the
world. Amnesty has described the oil spill investigations 'a fiasco’.
-ends-
Visit our Picasa web album
to see photos from Bodo here: https://picasaweb.google.com/102185733158964324756/BodoPhotographsPleaseCreditLeighDay?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLTa7IH6kIuHBg&feat=directlink
Please credit ‘Leigh Day’
on all photographs
David
Standard, Head of Media Relations
Leigh
Day Priory
House, 25 St John’s Lane, London EC1M 4LB
No comments:
Post a Comment