By LAWRENCE HURLEY of Greenwire
Published: August 11, 2011
Recent court rulings on the question of whether oil companies and other multinationals can be sued in U.S. courts for alleged human rights violations overseas has made the issue ripe for Supreme Court intervention, possibly as early as this fall.
Oil companies Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp. have been battling allegations that they played a role in human rights abuses in Nigeria and Indonesia, respectively.
Shell won a major victory last year when the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell that there was no corporate liability under the statute.