Chevron wins 1st jury trial in case invoking Alien Tort Statute against an oil company

It took jurors only a couple of days to decide that Chevron Corporation was not liable for the deaths of two protesters and injuries as well as mistreatment of others in the second jury trial involving a U.S. corporation brought under the Alien Tort Statute, the U.S. law about which IntLawGrrls frequently have posted.
As described further on the website of EarthRights International and in a prior post here, the case, Bowoto v. Chevron, involved claims for summary execution, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and arbitrary detention. Plaintiffs charged Chevron with complicity in brutal attacks against demonstrators in Nigeria who protested the oil company's environmental destruction and economic disruption in their communities. According to the plaintiffs, in May 1998, members of the Ilaje community staged a peaceful protest at Chevron's Parabe oil platform off the Nigerian coast. Chevron called in the Nigerian military and "kill and go" police, flew them to the platform on Chevron-contracted helicopters, and supervised their attack against the protesters.
Chevron told the jury a far different story. In its version, the demonstrators were holding workers on the platform hostage, and workers were afraid for their lives. After negotiations broke down over the sums needed to pay for the demonstrators’ expenses, Chevron maintained, it had no choice but to protect its workers by calling in local law enforcement. The loss of lives was unfortunate, Chevron allowed, but added that it was a consequence of the protesters themselves choosing to confront the security forces who showed up. In other words, they ran into the bullets, not the other way around.
Why did the jury apparently buy Chevron’s story rather than the plaintiffs’?
Hard to tell. It’s not clear whether jurors thought Chevron acted reasonably in the face of a threat, or whether they thought whatever happened was not the fault of the U.S.-based parent company.
Assuming the former, one possible explanation is that the contextual and cultural gulfs between the plaintiffs, most of whom testified through an interpreter, and the mostly white, mostly male jury were just too great. How do you get a U.S. jury to understand that under Nigeria’s Abacha dictatorship, in the conflict-ridden Niger delta, calling in the “kill and go” is not the equivalent of calling 911? Chevron very successfully managed to make the plaintiffs seem very “other” – and therefore dangerous – while encouraging the jury to identify with the (white, male) oil workers.
So what does this mean for future corporate ATS cases? Despite the disappointing outcome, there are couple of bright spots:
► The case turned on specific facts and issues of tort law, but the court accepted that if proven, the allegations would constitute violations of international law for which Chevron could be held liable. As the issues of international law become more settled, the ten years of pre-trial motions in this case might be whittled down somewhat in future cases.
► Just hauling the oil giant into court is already something of a victory: the publicity may force the company to change the way it deals with security forces, as it promised to do by signing onto the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights way back in 2000.
► And in any case, the suits go on: Chevron will be in California state court next year on these same charges. It also faces a lawsuit in Ecuador over environmental contamination. Shell goes to trial in February in New York over its activities in the Niger delta.
So in the longer run, with respect to how effective these cases are in changing corporate behavior, the jury’s still out.

(credit for October 2008 photo of San Francisco demonstration against Chevron)