Legal Precedent Set as Shell Found Guilty in the Hague

[limpyhobbler]

The desolate Niger Delta, where decades of gas flaring and chronic pollution have inflicted so much misery, is a world away from the clean clinical court room in the Hague.

But today, Shell’s dirty dealings in Nigeria finally came home to roost when a Dutch court ruled that the oil giant should pay for one out of five cases brought against it by Nigerian farmers and Friends of the Earth Netherlands.

The court claimed that for two oil spills near the village Ikot Ada Udo that Shell “has violated a duty of care and shall be held liable for tort of negligence”.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands, known as Milieudefensie and the plaintiffs will be disappointed that not all the claims were successful, but they plan to appeal about the spill at Goi in Ogoniland, which the court ruled there was “insufficient evidence that it was not cleaned up”.
...

more: http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/30/legal-precedent-set-as-shell-found-guilty-in-the-hague/

[FirstLight]

1. one small victory

hope to see more of this accountability in the future

[PDJane]

2. Amazing Decision,

and long overdue.

[2naSalit]

3. By the time we had been

ay war in Iraq for a couple years i realized that one of our only hopes for fixing what's so f'ked up in this country, especially now after seeing how the current admin. is so reluctant to go after our major criminals, is for ICC in The Hague to take action on our behalf. It seems that we really need them to help "we the little people" (as Denny Hastert called us back in his term as speaker of the house).