TIG Post

Tag: law suit

  • Nigerian communities file damages claim against Shell in UK court

    Nigerian communities file damages claim against Shell in UK court

    At the London High Court, more than 11,000 Nigerians from the oil-producing Niger Delta have filed a suit for compensation against Shell.

    The latest development in a case that will test whether multinational corporations can be held liable for the deeds of their foreign subsidiaries is the lawsuit filed on Thursday by the UK law firm Leigh Day.

    After years of oil spills had contaminated the land and groundwater, the UK Supreme Court permitted a group of 42,500 Nigerian farmers and fishermen to sue Shell in English courts in 2021.

    According to the judges at the time, one of the largest energy companies in the world, Shell, could be held accountable for the incident because it had significant control over its Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC.

    On Thursday, Leigh Day said it had filed claims on behalf of 11,317 people and 17 institutions including churches and schools from the Ogale community in the Niger Delta for compensation for loss of livelihoods and damage against Shell.

    Leigh Day said the claim from Ogale adds to one brought by members of the Bille community in 2015. That brings the total number of villagers seeking compensation from Shell to 13,652.

    The claims said oil spills resulting from Shell’s operations in the Niger Delta have destroyed farms, contaminated drinking water and harmed aquatic life. The average life expectancy in the region is 41 years, 10 years lower than the national average.

    “The next stage in the case is for a case management hearing to be set in Spring 2023, ahead of the full trial which is likely to occur the following year,” Leigh Day said in a statement.

    A Shell spokesperson said the majority of spills related to the Ogale and Bille claims were caused by illegal third-party interference, including pipeline sabotage but that SPDC would continue cleaning affected areas.

    “We believe litigation does little to address the real problem in the Niger Delta: oil spills due to crude oil theft, illegal refining and sabotage, with which SPDC is constantly faced and which cause the most environmental damage,” the spokesperson said.

    Oil spills, sometimes due to vandalism or corrosion, are common in the Niger Delta, a vast maze of creeks and mangrove swamps crisscrossed by pipelines and blighted by poverty, pollution and oil-fuelled corruption.

    In 2020 and 2021, Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) recorded 822 combined oil spills, totalling 28,003 barrels of oil spewed into the environment.

    SPDC was culpable for most of them, residents said, but the company has often blamed sabotage for the spills.

  • Prince Harry, Sir Elton John part of group suing Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers

    Prince Harry and Sir Elton John are among a group of celebrities suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Mail Online.

    The action claims they have “compelling and highly distressing evidence” they have been “victims of abhorrent criminal activity” and “gross breaches of privacy by Associated Newspapers”.

    Prince Harry and Sir Elton John are among a group of celebrities suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Mail Online.

    The action claims they have “compelling and highly distressing evidence” they have been “victims of abhorrent criminal activity” and “gross breaches of privacy by Associated Newspapers”.

    Also in the group is Baroness Doreen Lawrence, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, and Sadie Frost said a statement from the law firm Hamlins.

    Associated Newspapers has not yet responded to a request for comment by the Reuters news agency.

    Prince Harry successfully sued Associated Newspapers in the past with a judge ruling in July that parts of an article in The Mail On Sunday were defamatory.

    And in 2021 he accepted an apology and “substantial damages”over false claims he snubbed the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior royal.

    Meghan alsowon damages following a three-year legal battle against the publisher for printing parts of a letter to her father.

  • In the Musk lawsuit, the CEO of Twitter will be interrogated

    The CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, will be questioned in a deposition on Monday as part of the ongoing legal action the company is pursuing to compel Elon Musk to finish buying the social media company for $44 billion.

    According to a court filing, lawyers for Musk are set to question Agrawal at 9 a.m. PT. Musk himself is set to be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers on Monday and Tuesday, according to an earlier court filing.
    The testimony comes as both sides barrel toward a high-profile trial set for mid-October.
    Musk has sought to extricate himself from the merger agreement, first by claiming that Twitter’s spam account problem is far greater than it has let on, and later by citing allegations of longstanding unaddressed security vulnerabilities disclosed by the company’s former head of security.
    Those allegations, which were also submitted to the US government under a whistleblower process, were first reported by CNN and The Washington Post last month.
    Monday’s deposition could force Agrawal to answer questions linked to the whistleblower allegations by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who led Twitter’s security team from November 2020 until he was fired this January.
    Twitter has previously said that Zatko’s allegations paint a “false narrative” of the company and that Musk’s claims are “factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant.”
    Earlier this month, leading members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Agrawal a letter seeking similar information and requested responses by Sept. 26, but it is not clear whether Twitter has responded to the letter. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.