HIGH COURT TO HEAR HOW UK LAW FIRM ACCUSED OF NIGERIAN ‘SCAM'
The High Court will hear evidence on Thursday 9 October that a UK based law firm, CW Law, is accused of trying to unlawfully benefit from the claims of over 7,000 claimants in a dispute over oil spills in Nigeria.
The Marble Arch based law firm, CW Law, are accused of entering into settlement talks with Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) on behalf of 7,400 villagers of Bodo, in the Niger Delta, who it is alleged they didn’t represent and who were not clients of the firm.
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.
The Technological and Construction Court, part of the High Court, will be asked to implement an injunction to prevent CW Law and Egbegi & Co or anyone representing them to make contact with people in the Bodo Community.
The Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) has been asked to investigate the practices of CW Law.
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'.
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The hearing is before Mr Justice Akenhead, the President of the Technological and Construction Court at the Technology and Construction Court, Rolls Building, at 10:30 on Thursday 9th October
Interview requests:
Please call David Standard to speak to either Martyn Day or Dan Leader – legal representatives for the Bodo community.
David Standard
07540 332717
01949 850246
dstandard@leighday.co.uk
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
*Bodo on Google Maps http://g.co/maps/hbc5p
David
Standard, Head of Media Relations
Leigh
Day Priory
House, 25 St John’s Lane, London EC1M 4LB
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