U.S. District Judge Susan Illston
Image: Jason Doiy/The Recorder
A federal judge late last week lashed out at the State Department's denial of visas for more than a dozen Nigerian witnesses set to testify in a pending trial over allegations that Chevron Corp. aided the Nigerian military in human rights violations a decade ago.
Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston agreed to delay the Sept. 28 trial start until Oct. 27, but not before an unusual show of anger aimed at the State Department. She was told by Chevron attorney Robert Mittelstaedt of Jones Day's San Francisco office, that 11 of 12 witnesses were denied visas because there was little proof they would return home after testifying.
"I am shocked that the State Department would take that point of view, that [the witnesses] will not be granted visas to testify in a federal court," Illston said in the unusual emergency court session Friday, in which plaintiffs sought the trial delay.
"That is a different branch of government and I can't do anything about it," Illston said, "but I am shocked."
A State Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
The case stems from a nine-year-long legal battle by Nigerian villagers seeking to hold multinational Chevron Corp. liable for allegedly aiding the Nigerian military in attacks that killed and wounded protesters at Chevron oil facilities in 1998 and 1999, Bowoto v. Chevron Corp., No. 99-cv-2506SI.
The legal battle has been hard fought for years and only intensified as the trial date approached, with both sides trading sharp criticism during the hurriedly called Friday session.
Plaintiffs' attorney, Theresa Traber of Traber & Voorhees, in papers seeking the trial delay, asked Illston to require Chevron to declare under penalty of perjury that it did not have a role in pressuring either the Nigerian government or the U.S. to withhold the visas.
This brought a sharp protest from Mittelstaedt.
"For the last nine years we have faced an unrelenting publicity campaign attacking us," Mittelstaedt said. He noted that the lead plaintiff in the case, Larry Bowoto, got a visa and used it to come to the Chevron shareholders meeting to make a public protest and give interviews this summer.
"Even Chevron has a right to a jury trial to clear its name," he said.
In papers filed with the court, he stated "no such communications have occurred," and called the suggestion "offensive," saying "no reason exists to believe that any Chevron company or employee has communicated in any way with any governmental agency."
He added, "I take offense at the innuendo that Chevron was responsible." Illston said she also considered it nothing more than innuendo.
Traber said the numerous lawyers in the case have worked for months to get visas and passports for the witnesses, many of them villagers in rural Nigeria, with little of the documentation required for visas.
She added that there were "reports of witnesses being told that because they were testifying against Chevron they would not get visas. But it could not be confirmed," she said, so it was not included in papers.
This brought a new round of objections from Mittelstaedt over voicing the unconfirmed allegations.
Illston agreed to a one-month delay, but said that would be the last because many of the witnesses gave videotaped depositions, which could be played for jurors.
