Inequality of Harms, Inequality of Arms: Kiobel v. Shell Comes to an End

On November 8th 2022 Channa Samkalden, lawyer for Esther Kiobel and three other widows of executed Nigerian community leaders, announced that her clients would be ending their lawsuit against Shell. The lawsuit was dismissed by the district court of The Hague in March 2022, and the claimants had appealed that decision. Uncertainty about the outcome, combined with the fact that the case had already been (unsuccessfully) going on for over 20 years in multiple fora, had made the four widows decide to withdraw the appeal, “not without disappointment and frustration”. In this blog, I discuss the background to this case and its remarkable procedural history. I then argue why this history, set against the particular facts of the case, illustrates the fundamental procedural unfairness between large corporations and victims trying to hold them to account.