In the wake of the announcement of Shell’s payment of $15.5 Million USD to settle the Wiwa v. Shell lawsuit out-of-court, there was a flurry of press coverage around the world.

In the U.S., where the legal action was filed and where reporters and interested parties waited for a trial to begin in the District Court in Manhattan, the coverage was strong for a day or two in predictable outlets and then quickly pushed out of the spotlight by other pressing news – rising tensions with North Korea, the ongoing economic crisis, a celebrity’s new tattoo.

In the U.K., the breaking news coverage of the settlement was also strong but also carried on a bit longer, with more analysis of the implications of the settlement and some review of the evidence that would have been presented to a jury had the trial gone forward.

In Nigeria, there were plenty of stories, though media reaction to the settlement was more mixed. Many of the stories also connected the story to the larger crisis faced by oil-afflicted communities in the Niger Delta.

Elsewhere, there was more interesting coverage – from Shell’s headquarters in the Netherlands to New Zealand. Below is a roundup of English-language media highlights:

In The New York Times, Jad Mouawad opens his article:

Royal Dutch Shell, the big oil company, agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a case accusing it of taking part in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta in the early 1990s, a striking sum given that the company has denied any wrongdoing.”

and goes on to write:

For the Nigerian plaintiffs and their lawyers, Shell’s settlement, including publication of the sum involved, is a significant victory. Companies commonly demand that details of such settlements be kept secret, for fear of setting precedents.”

It’s a relatively short wrap-up piece but it seems to quite plainly pronounce a victory for the plaintiffs.

In the UK’s Financial Times, Harvey Morris writes a very brief piece on the settlement with no analysis of its implications or attempt to score the outcome. He uses only one quote. To conclude the article, he gives Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. the last word:

In reaching this settlement, we were very much aware that we are not the only Ogonis who have suffered in our struggle with Shell.”

In an Associated Press article that ran widely – including in the Washington Post with a photo of the May 27th ‘Justice for the Ogoni 9′ rally in New York – Chris Kahn gives a relatively balanced and broad look at the settlement and its implications. He quotes Ken Jr. to open and close the piece. He also quotes Shell’s statement, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and a law professor:

Ralph Steinhardt, a George Washington professor of international law, said he doesn’t think Shell got off easy with the settlement.

“It’s not the size of the company that’s the right measure here,” Steinhardt said. “At the end of the day, it’s to get some acknowledgment of the plaintiffs and their suffering and the role of the company.”

The article in the Guardian Nigeria lifts chunks from the breaking news in AP & NY Times articles, but adding reaction from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and comments by plaintiff Owens Wiwa, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s brother:

More than anything about the money and the settlement, the settlement is a form of justice. Some of the litigants in this case have been waiting for 13 years. Think about the woman without an arm. Think about the man who was tortured. Think about those who were exiled. Think about the relatives of the man who was shot. This settlement is not the end of the Ogoni struggle.”

In the Los Angeles Times, Robyn Dixon, reporting from South Africa, looks at the bigger picture. In her story, beneath the headline, “People of Niger Delta see new beginning in settlement for executions,” she quotes Ledum Mitee of MOSOP, who was also on trial with the Ogoni 9 but acquitted:

Both the government and Shell have to build on this and address the large issues not only for the Ogoni people but for the Niger Delta.”

The Dutch newspaper NRC HANDELSBLAD ran a story cobbled together from the AP and Reuters wire. But the next day, an editorial by former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers said that  Ken Saro-Wiwa was let down by the Netherlands, where Royal Dutch Shell is headquartered. Referring to the fact that the Nigerian plaintiffs filed their suit in the U.S. under the Alien Tort Claims Act, he writes:

We should be ashamed, as Dutch and Europeans, that there was no place in the Netherlands for Saro-Wiwa’s relatives to take their grievances. There is work to be done here for Dutch and European lawmakers.”

There was far too much coverage in the blogs than I have time to round up here but I will point to two must-read posts that give some analysis of the meaning of the settlement. The first is by Steve Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International (and a ShellGuilty campaigner). He was a Greenpeace campaigner and advisor to Ken Saro-Wiwa and MOSOP in the early 90s. In his Huffington Post piece, headlined ‘Shell’s Settlement Doesn’t Hide Unsettling Reality in Nigeria,’ he links to some of the damning documentary evidence of Shell’s collusion with the Nigerian military and brings the issue around to what Shell is still doing in the Niger Delta:

While there is no doubt that the settlement represented a significant victory for the plaintiffs’ in this one human rights case against Shell, true justice will not be served as long as the people of Nigeria continue to suffer the terrible impact of Shell’s operations. Shell estimates it would cost about $3 billion — only 10% of just their last year’s profits — to end Shell’s gas flaring in Nigeria once and for all.

In a very different article on the Am Law Daily blog, Chief International Correspondent for American Lawyer magazine Michael Goldhaber presents his thoughtful analysis of the implications of the settlement, as well as the 13+ years of litigation that preceded it. He also attempts to score the outcome. Under the headline, ‘A Win for Wiwa, A Win for Shell, A Win for Corporate Human Rights,’ he argues that while the settlement is obviously a compromise between the plaintiffs and Shell, the true victor is the movement for international human rights:

While the facts in dispute will never be settled, Wiwa has left its mark on law and legal culture–and in this respect the movement for business human rights is the big winner.”

As far as TV news, CNN ran a brief interview with Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. and BBC had an interview with plaintiffs’ attorney Judith Chomsky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

But Channel 4 in the UK deserves a blue ribbon for its report that looks not only at the settlement, but also takes the time to review the evidence that the plaintiffs brought to light over the course of their successful 13-year litigation of the case. The anchor Jon Snow presents the investigative report like this:

The oil giant Shell has always denied claims of being comlicit in grave human rights abuses in Nigeria. But Channel 4 News has now obtained copies of court documents showing how the Anglo-Dutch company enlisted the help of Nigeria’s former military regime to deal with protesters.”

Finally, the New Zealand Herald ran a very brief two-paragraph story beneath the headline, Ken Saro-Wiwa wins case against Shell