Legal CASES

Holding Corporations Accountable Worldwide

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Main Work Areas

EarthRights develops precedent-setting litigation and advances novel legal strategies.

Corporate Accountability

We expose environmental destruction, climate harms, and human rights abuses; challenging conduct, repairing harm, and preventing future abuses.
Climate

EarthRights ensures that fossil fuel companies take responsibility for their role in the climate crisis by representing local governments, shifting financial burdens away from communities, and promoting stronger oversight.
Indigenous Rights

We partner with Indigenous communities and networks, especially across Latin America and Southeast Asia, to uphold territorial stewardship, defend their rights to self-determination, and demand meaningful state action.
Environmental Defenders

EarthRights provides training, legal defense, and helps create and strengthen regional and international networks for defenders.

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La Fiscalía Provincial se abstuvo de impugnar la sentencia de segunda instancia que confirmaba la inocencia de todas las y los comuneros de Urinsaya.

Alcalde de Pasco demanda a minera Volcan para exigir justicia ambiental por contaminación en Cerro de Pasco

New Mexico’s Regulator Sued for Failure to Hold Oil and Gas Companies Accountable for Well Cleanup

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For over 30 years, we have been the nonprofit legal organization at the forefront of holding powerful corporations accountable for human rights and environmental abuses worldwide and to shift power back to the communities they harm.

Case Status

Issue Area

Region

Legal Strategy

Juana Doe et al. v. IFC

Status: Ongoing

Issues: Corporate Accountability

Honduran Farmers Sue World Bank Group for Complicity in Human Rights Violations SUMMARY Case Status: Closed – Settled Issues: Corporate Accountability This is one of the most severe cases of corporate-related human rights abuse (and financier negligence) in the past decade. The International Financial Corporation (IFC), the World Bank group’s private lending arm, provided loans…
Climate Change Litigation in Colorado

Status: Ongoing

Issues: Climate Justice & Accountability

Climate Change Litigation in Colorado Case Name: BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF BOULDER COUNTY; BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF SAN MIGUEL COUNTY; CITY OF BOULDER v. SUNCOR ENERGY (U.S.A.), INC.; SUNCOR ENERGY SALES, INC.; SUNCOR ENERGY, INC.; EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION Summary: We represent the Colorado communities of Boulder County, San Miguel County, and the City…
Doe v. Unocal

Status: Closed, Historic

Issues: Corporate Accountability, EarthRights Defenders

Case Name: Doe v. Unocal Summary: When Unocal, a U.S. oil and gas company, partnered with the notorious Burmese military to build a gas pipeline, knowing the military would commit human rights abuses, we filed a landmark lawsuit against Unocal. As predicted, the military pulled villagers from their homes and forced them to do backbreaking…
Maynas v. Occidental Petroleum

Status: Closed

Issues: Corporate Accountability

SUMMARY In 2007, EarthRights International brought suit on behalf of twenty-five indigenous Achuar plaintiffs from the Peruvian Amazon against Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy), alleging egregious harm caused by Oxy over a thirty-year period in the Corrientes River basin during which Oxy contaminated the rivers and lands of the indigenous Achuar communities, causing death,…
Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Shell

Status: Closed

Issues: Corporate Accountability, EarthRights Defenders

SUMMARY When the Ogoni people of Nigeria organized in protest of Shell’s oil operations in the Niger Delta, Shell worked with the Nigerian military to crack down on the Ogoni. Nigerian soldiers used deadly force and massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people throughout the early 1990s to repress a growing movement against the oil…