LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled that a group of Nigerian farmers and fishermen can sue Royal Dutch Shell PLC in the English courts over pollution in a region where the energy giant has a subsidiary. The justices said Shell may owe a “duty of care” to the claimants over the actions of its Nigerian subsidiary. Members of Nigeria’s Ogale and Bille communities took Shell to court in Britain in 2015, alleging that decades of oil spills have fouled the water, contaminated the soil and destroyed the lives of thousands of people in the Niger River Delta. Shell argued that the U.K. courts had no jurisdiction to hear the case, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Shell called the ruling “disappointing.”
