Broken English: a critique of the Dutch Court of Appeal decision in Four Nigerian Farmers and Milieudefensie v Shell

Abstract

In 2021, a Dutch Court of Appeal was the first court to hold that the parent company of a transnational corporate group incurred a duty of care to victims in a third state, who had been harmed by activities of the company’s subsidiary. While this signals significant progress for the movement towards more accountability of parent companies, and better prospects for remedies for victims, the decision is in some respects also a missed opportunity. This contribution examines the decision from a transnational law perspective, provides a critique of how the Court of Appeal misconstrues relevant English precedent, and discusses the public dimensions of this decision and cases like it.