Steven Donziger Reacts to Shell Paying Historic $16 Million to Nigerian Farmers

Donziger and Ron Placone discuss what his landmark case against Chevron and the recent case in Nigeria means for the future of environmental justice and corporate accountability.

In a landmark case for Nigerian farmers who suffered damages from leaky oil pipelines, Shell agreed to pay $16 million in damages to farmers in Nigeria in a settlement case between the big–oil conglomerate and the advocacy group Friends of the Earth.

Status Coup host Ron Placone interviewed environmental attorney Steven Donziger, who recently represented 30,000 Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous peoples in a similar battle with the Chevron Corporation, regarding environmental and health abuses by the corporation.

Donziger and Placone discuss what Donzinger’s landmark case against Chevron and the recent case in Nigeria means for the future of environmental justice and corporate accountability. 

“The oil industry tries to pull out all the stops. Every dirty trick it can think of to never pay these judgments, because they do not want these communities to think they can even win.”

Steven Donziger

Ron Placone:

Steven Donziger is an attorney who went up against Chevron and they didn’t like that so they went up against him and the fight continues. Steven, how are you? Thanks for being here.

Steven Donziger:

Great to be here with you Ron. Thanks for having me.

Ron Placone:

Most people listening, I’m sure, already know who you are. But if you could just give people a snapshot of what you were involved with concerning Chevron and Cliffs Notes version of everything you have been through?

Steven Donziger:

Well, thanks. So, I worked with a team of lawyers down in Ecuador for many years in a lawsuit against Chevron after the company had dumped literally billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into the rainforest and decimated indigenous groups. We ended up winning the case. Roughly a $10 billion dollar judgment, a historic victory back in 2009. It was a form of appeal by six different appellant courts including the Supreme Court of Ecuador, and the Supreme Court of Canada for enforcement purposes. Chevron went after me here in New York. Claimed the case was a fraud, even though it had been affirmed by various appellant courts around the world. And, in my opinion, they corrupted the judicial process, and basically prosecuted me privately for contempt of court. And had me locked up for almost three years which ended last April. So, now I’m out doing my thing as a human rights lawyer and environmental justice lawyer. But…I was targeted by the nation’s first private corporate prosecution. 

The case is still under appeal. It was my opinion, is very unfair. But it’s a warning sign to everyone out there who cares about justice, cares about the climate movement, cares about our democracy that the corporate capture of our government extends to at least some pockets of our federal judiciary in a very direct way.

So, we can talk more about that maybe some other time. But, I’m happy now to talk, if you want, about the Shell case.

Ron Placone:

Yeah, so let’s jump into that because dare I say, that’s a little bit of good news. Which I say we could all use this holiday season. So, what happened over in Nigeria?

Steven Donziger:

So, this is an important case. I try to keep my eye on important environmental legal cases in courts around the world, just because I think the legal piece to saving our planet is often overlooked. And, I think it’s really important.

So, what happened is, a group called Friend of the Earth—the Netherlands Branch, sued Shell, which at the time was based in the Netherlands, for pollution one of its subsidiaries caused to a handful of villages in Nigeria because of a leaking underground pipeline. This case went on for 13 years and it resulted in, in my opinion, a landmark settlement where the company agreed to pay $16 million to four farmers and their villages, to compensate them for the environmental damages caused by the leaking pipeline.

Now,  in the larger scheme of things, with a company that has revenue in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year, I recognize $16 million might not seem like that much money. But this is really significant for two reasons. One is that it will make a huge difference for these communities. I mean, it will improve their situations, and their lifestyles dramatically.

Even more importantly it creates a really important precedent because Dutch courts established that Shell was responsible for pollution caused by its wholly-owned farm subsidiary in Nigeria. The first thing oil companies do when they get sued in their home-country courts by people abroad, who they negatively impact, is they claim “you can’t sue us here because that wasn’t us. That was our subsidiary. That’s a different company.” It’s just a legal fiction designed to obtain impunity for human rights violations.

So, the fact the Dutch court rejected that, in this case, which resulted in this landmark settlement, is significant. Not just for the four Nigerian farmers and their villages. It’s significant for every environmental campaign in the world that represents people in other countries. Usually underresourced countries in the Global South that want to take on the big polluters in the North like the Chevrons, the Shells, the Exons, and the BP’s. This decision in Dutch courts, while it technically only applies to the Netherlands, actually will have, in my opinion, positive ramifications in countries around the world that will take on similar cases. To me, this is very significant. It’s a big victory for the movement, for the planet, and for the climate movement.

Ron Placone:

Do you think it’s kind of a sign? Because, I’ll tell you an aside here, and I’m sure you can speak to this to infinite levels. But, I grew up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania which is the land of fracking in Western Pennsylvania right now, and when I was in grad school  I did a big study on just the fracking industry in the area. I found so many cases of what you are talking about where they actually committed thousands of violations that were never reported. And what they did every time was they passed the buck to a contractor…So, it seems like that’s a common dirty trick across the oil industry. Now, do you think, because of this ruling, that’s a dirty trick that’s not going to work anymore, or at least not work as much?

Steven Donziger:

Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is one important victory that I think can be cited by lawyers who fight for environmental justice in other countries. As an example of how to do it. Now, in our case in Chevron out of Ecuador, where we won the case, Chevron made the same argument. They refused to pay the judgment, which is completely unethical. We then went into Canada, and other countries where they had assets, to enforce the judgment, to force them to pay the judgment. To force them to comply with the rule of law. And, the first defense they came up with, was the same defense Shell tried to use in the Netherlands. Which is: “wait a second. You can’t sue us in Canada, because in Canada we don’t exist. Only our subsidiary Chevron Canada exists.”

Chevron’s in dozens of countries, operating in subsidiaries. So, their argument, essentially, is a cheap dirty trick to try to obtain legal impunity for massive human rights violations, through some technical feature of the law that is just invented by them [oil companies]. Then they try to convenience courts. In the United States and Canada, many of these courts have judges that come out of the big corporate law firms, pro-corporate in their orientation. And they buy it. It’s really a terrible thing that a corporation can hide behind its subsidiary to avoid paying a legitimate legal judgment as Chevron continues to do in Ecuador, and Shell tried to do in the Netherlands but got shot down by courts in that country.

This is significant. Because now when the Ecuadorians go into Canada and any other country, and Chevron tries to pull the same dirty trick, [the Ecuadorians] have an important precedent from a very well-respected country’s judiciary that can blow up Chevron’s defense in our case. So, it helps a lot of people. Now, it’s not just positive. They [oil companies] will pull out every dirty trick in the book to avoid paying out these judgments. They hate having to do it.

By the way, even though Shell paid $16 million, and it doesn’t feel like a lot of money to a big-oil company, they hate the idea of it. They hate paying $100. Their whole business model is predicated on, basically, privatizing profits and externalizing costs. And, they fight really hard to never pay court judgment because they don’t want these vulnerable communities filing more cases.

And, in these cases, when you win them, (and we won our’s in Ecuador even though we are still fighting for Chevron to comply with that decision), in the Netherlands Friends of the Earth won their cases — it’s inspirational. People see it. They get motivated. They get inspired. They want to do the same thing.

So, the oil industry tries to pull out all the stops. Every dirty trick it can think of to never pay these judgments because they do not want these communities to think they can even win.

So, this is a big-time victory for me as I look at the legal landscape across the world.

Now, let’s not exaggerate the importance of the law. It is one component piece of a much larger movement. You need campaigners, activism, stuff in the streets, and policy people. But, we can’t ignore the law either. We need to use those spaces, and the legal world that exists, to advance the cause of the climate movement if we want to save the planet. 

Watch the full interview with Status Coup on Youtube: