Chevron denied compensation of $500,000 for trial over Nigerian shooting

A federal judge has denied Chevron Corp.’s demand to be compensated for nearly $500,000 in trial costs by the impoverished Nigerians who lost their lawsuit against the oil giant for alleged human rights violations.

Assessing families who live on less than $100 a month for the corporation’s outlays to bring expert witnesses and a mountain of legal documents to the San Francisco courtroom “would have a chilling effect on future civil rights litigants,” wrote U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in a ruling issued late Wednesday.

Villagers from the Niger Delta region took San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron to trial in the fall in an attempt to hold the company responsible for the 1998 shooting and mistreatment of protesters by Nigerian soldiers at Chevron’s Parabe offshore oil rig. The villagers were protesting the extensive environmental damage they said the oil company’s operations inflicted on the region, including destruction of the farmland and fisheries that had provided their livelihoods.

Survivors of the confrontation testified that Chevron paid the Nigerian military and its notorious “kill and go” mobile police squad to break up a peaceful demonstration, leaving two protesters dead and two others wounded.

Chevron contended that the protesters had taken oil-platform workers hostage and that the company had called in Nigerian forces to protect them and defuse the standoff -- a position that apparently swayed the San Francisco jury, which cleared Chevron of the human rights violation charges.

Lawyers for the Nigerians were denied their request for a new trial last month but have appealed the Dec. 1 verdict to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In denying Chevron’s claim to recover trial costs, Illston cited the “extreme income disparity between plaintiffs and defendants,” noting that the oil company posted earnings last year of nearly $24 billion.

Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and one of the lawyers who represented the Nigerians at trial, said, “We’re pleased that Chevron’s attempt to punish these poor Nigerian villagers was soundly rejected by the court, and that the court saw through the oil company’s larger effort to deter victims of human rights abuses from bringing suit.”

A Chevron spokesman said the company had sought compensation from the lawyers and human rights groups that funded the lawsuit, not the Nigerian villagers.

“While Chevron never expected the plaintiffs to pay these costs themselves, there would have been true justice if the contingency-fee lawyers and advocacy groups whom we believe conceived, drove and funded the litigation bore some of the costs,” said spokesman Morgan Crinklaw. “The lawyers certainly spared no expense in pursuing meritless claims against Chevron for 10 years, which a federal jury unanimously rejected.”

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carol.williams@latimes.com