Remember how the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Lamps Plus, Inc v Varela was supposed to be lights out for classwide arbitration?

Well, it looks like reports of the demise of class arbitration may have been at least slightly exaggerated, after a decision this week from the American Arbitration Association in an antitrust case brought by the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino Resort against gaming machine companies Scientific Games Corp and Bally Technologies Inc.

The casino alleges that the companies are monopolizing the market for automatic card-shuffling machines, using anticompetitive tactics to gain control and then inflating prices for casinos. Its contract with the gaming machine companies did not specifically prohibit or permit classwide arbitration.

But AAA arbitrator John Wilkinson ruled that the “exceedingly broad language” of the arbitration clause – which mandates arbitration of “any and all controversies, disputes or claims of any nature arising directly or indirectly out of or in connection with this agreement” — encompassed classwide claims.

. . .

Mohawk casino counsel Michael Eisenkraft and Manuel John Dominguez of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll told me that the AAA arbitrator’s holding on ambiguity was the key to evading Lamps Plus precedent barring classwide arbitration.

“If it’s ambiguous, you’re handcuffed,” Dominguez said. “What we wanted to argue was that the contract was not ambiguous.”

Cohen Milstein got involved in the Mohawk casino’s case after the Supreme Court’s Lamps Plus ruling, Eisenkraft said, so the firm was well aware of the risk that classwide arbitration might not be allowed. And if the arbitrator had found that classwide claims were barred, he said, it might not have been economically feasible for an individual casino to arbitrate a claim, given the high cost of antitrust litigation. But Cohen Milstein believed that because the Mohawk casino’s arbitration clause called for arbitration of “any and all” claims, including claims indirectly related to its own, the clause was worded broadly enough to include classwide claims.

AAA’s Wilkinson agreed. The arbitration agreement that the Supreme Court examined in Lamps Plus, he noted, was tailored for individual employees, using such specific terms as “I,” “me” and “my.” Those are critical words in the interpretation of the scope of arbitration contracts, Wilkinson said. “The absence of such limiting, binary language is of utmost significance,” the arbitrator said.

“The lesson,” said casino counsel Eisenkraft, “is that ‘everything’ means everything. If you want to cut something out, you have to say so.” This contract, he added, was signed in 2015, after classwide arbitration had become an issue at the Supreme Court. It was common by then for arbitration contracts to include a specific waiver of classwide claims, Eisenkraft said, but the Mohawk casino’s provision was silent on that issue.

. . .

Assuming that Wilkinson’s classwide arbitration decision is not overturned in court, it’s going to be interesting to see how the case plays out. Eisenkraft and Dominguez said they are not sure how many other casinos signed arbitration agreements like their client’s contract with Scientific Gaming and Bally, though they estimate there will be hundreds of class members.

Hundreds of consumer class actions allege household items like spices, baby food, sunscreen and deodorant contain toxic substances, such as arsenic, lead and benzene.

What You Need to Know

• Half a dozen class actions target spices, the latest household items alleged to contain toxic metals.
• More than 100 lawsuits claim toxic metals are in baby food, with at least one judge refusing to dismiss cases over Plum Organics.
• The lawsuits all cite scientific research from nonprofit organizations, such as Healthy Babies Bright Futures and Consumer Reports.

Dried oregano, thyme and an array of other spices are the targets of half a dozen class actions, the latest household items alleged to contain dangerous levels of toxic substances unbeknownst to consumers.

The spice lawsuits, filed in the past month, join more than 100 consumer lawsuits across the country already claiming the same metals are in baby food. Other class actions target sunscreen and deodorant containing benzene, a known carcinogen.

The lawsuits all cite scientific research from nonprofit organizations, such as Healthy Babies Bright Futures and Consumer Reports, which found trace amounts of toxic substances in the products. The cases are still in their early stages: federal judges mostly have consolidated the lawsuits and appointed lead counsel. But the class action bar is enthusiastic about the success of the lawsuits.

. . .

The cases have attracted big-name law firms. Defendants brought in White & Case, Jenner & Block, Dechert and Covington & Burling. Plaintiffs firms include Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Labaton Sucharow, Levin Sedran & Berman and Lockridge Grindal Nauen.

Most of the firms specialize in class actions but not personal injuries or, in some cases, consumer law.

Cohen Milstein, for instance, has a diversified practice portfolio in which about 10% are consumer cases, said the Washington, D.C., firm’s managing partner, Steven Toll.

The firm submitted leadership applications in the lawsuits against Hain Celestial, maker of Earth’s Best brand of baby food, now coordinated in the Eastern District of New York, and Gerber, consolidated in the Eastern District of Virginia.

“It’s not a new area for us, but we’re very selective,” Toll said of the firm’s consumer cases. “Every once in a while, if a case may jump out because it’s high profile and looks strong on the merits, we’ll get involved.”

A Native American tribe that runs a casino resort in upstate New York can pursue class arbitration in its antitrust case against two suppliers of automatic card shufflers, an arbitrator has ruled.

Mohawk Gaming Enterprises LLC, doing business as Akwesasne Mohawk Casino Resort, is suing Scientific Games Corp. and Bally Technologies Inc., which sell gambling equipment, on behalf of a putative class claiming that the suppliers monopolized the market for shuffling devices.

The sole issue decided in the American Arbitration Association ruling Tuesday was whether the arbitration clause of a license and lease agreement that Mohawk signed for the gambling supplies allows the plaintiff to move ahead on behalf of a class under the tribunal’s rules.

Arbitrator John Wilkinson said the language of the clause allows class arbitration, taking into account the case law of three key U.S. Supreme Court decisions related to the issue. The high court rulings are Stolt-Nielsen SA v. Animalfeeds International Corp., Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, and Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, all of which the arbitrator noted have set the “ground rules” for interpreting the clause in Mohawk’s agreement.

The arbitrator said the disputed clause is “far broader” than either AAA’s standard arbitration clause or the cases cited by the respondents in seeking to deny class arbitration. He also cited a lack of limiting language in the Mohawk clause.

Arbitrators have “consistently held that an arbitration clause which does not specifically mention class arbitration but contains significantly broader language than the AAA clause is sufficiently inclusive” to allow for it, the decision says.

An attorney for the Mohawk Tribe told Law360 in a statement that the decision was a big win given the high court holdings on arbitrability.

“This ruling shows that, even under current Supreme Court jurisprudence, there remains a viable path forward to class arbitration,” said the attorney, Manuel John Dominquez of Cohen Milstein. “This is important because, without the benefits of scale provided by class arbitration, many claims could never be brought.”

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The proposed class alleged that Scientific Games and Bally Technologies violated the Sherman Act, claiming they “achieved market dominance by fraudulently procuring patents and by repeatedly and illegally using those patents as the basis for sham claims of patent infringement against potential competitors and new entrants,” according to the AAA ruling.

According to Mohawk, “this practice left respondents free to set inflated prices without concern of being undercut by others or losing market share.”

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Mohawk Gaming is represented by Michael Eisenkraft, Manuel J. Dominguez, Robert A. Braun and Leonardo Chingcuanco of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Michael Steifman and Fran Rudich of Steifman LLP and Joseph Goldberg, David A. Freedman and Vincent J. Ward of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward PA.

The Ninth Circuit on Thursday denied an objector’s petition to rehear a decision that gives $13 million to internet privacy advocates and lawyers to end allegations that Google’s Street View car fleet illegally gathered Wi-Fi network data, but no money for 60 million class members.

On a 2-1 vote, the panel that issued the December 2021 decision ruled on Thursday to deny the request for a rehearing before the appellate court’s full bench.

“The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc,” Thursday’s decision states.

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The contested deal requires Google to fork over roughly $9 million to nine nonprofit organizations with a history of addressing online consumer privacy issues and $3.25 million in attorneys’ fees. However, it does not call for monetary relief to settlement class members.

A California federal judge signed off on the pact in March 2020, despite objections from Lowery and several state attorneys general.

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The plaintiffs are represented by Elizabeth J. Cabraser and Melissa Gardner of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Mary Ann Geppert, Jeffrey L. Kodroff and John A. Macoretta of Spector Roseman & Kodroff PC, and Daniel A. Small and The Ninth Circuit on Thursday denied an objector’s petition to rehear a decision that gives $13 million to internet privacy advocates and lawyers to end allegations that Google’s Street View car fleet illegally gathered Wi-Fi network data, but no money for 60 million class members. On a 2-1 vote, the panel that issued the December 2021 decision ruled on Thursday to deny the request for a rehearing before the appellate court’s full bench. “The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc,” Thursday’s decision states. . . . The contested deal requires Google to fork over roughly $9 million to nine nonprofit organizations with a history of addressing online consumer privacy issues and $3.25 million in attorneys’ fees. However, it does not call for monetary relief to settlement class members. A California federal judge signed off on the pact in March 2020, despite objections from Lowery and several state attorneys general. . . . The plaintiffs are represented by Elizabeth J. Cabraser and Melissa Gardner of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Mary Ann Geppert, Jeffrey L. Kodroff and John A. Macoretta of Spector Roseman & Kodroff PC, and Daniel A. Small and Robert W. Cobbs of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

A Black former Miami Dolphins head coach’s blockbuster suit accusing the NFL of systemic discrimination demonstrates that even employers with strong policies aimed at boosting diversity can get flagged for bias violations if those policies aren’t carefully applied, experts say.

Brian Flores filed his Manhattan federal court class action against the league weeks after being controversially fired by the Dolphins and days after he was passed over for a job as head coach of the New York Giants in favor of Brian Daboll, a white coach from the Buffalo Bills’ staff.

The suit includes claims that the number of Black head coaches in the NFL is woefully out of step with the league’s predominantly Black player population, despite the NFL’s so-called Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for head coaching positions. Flores also alleges that his interview with the Giants was a sham to comply with the Rooney Rule because text messages he received from New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick indicated the decision to hire Daboll had already been made.

Regardless of whether Flores’ suit proves to be successful, employment attorneys say his claims show the danger that lurks for employers when there is a chasm between their diversity policies and the way hiring and promotion decisions are actually made.

“I am interested to see what happens with this particular case, but really hope that it doesn’t deter employers who are actually wanting to find policies that will make a difference,” said Christine Webber, co-chair of plaintiffs-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC’s Civil Rights & Employment practice.

While many companies follow through on enforcing their diversity policies, Webber said there “are plenty that just see it as ‘check-a-box,'” in which they “establish a policy and call it good.”

“Companies are all over the place, but far too many, I would say, [believe] establishing a policy is like, ‘OK, now we can say we have a policy so, you know, we’re fine,’ without really doing the work needed to educate their managers and set up systems that will actually be effective,” Webber said. “There are companies that look fine on paper, but the paper just doesn’t reflect what’s really happening on the ground for employees.”

. . .

Regarding the allegation in Flores’ suit that his rejection for the Giants job was made before his interview ever took place, Cohen Milstein’s Webber said it’s the sort of thing she sees happen when there is an opening for people to make decisions outside a company’s hiring protocols without incurring consequences.

While a policy on paper may be worthwhile for nudging people to truly consider a broader pool of candidates than they otherwise might, Webber said its effectiveness hinges on whether an employer enforces it and “keep[s] people from making decisions outside the system.”

The ways rogue actors can do so, she said, may be by drafting job announcements in such a way that they match the credentials of a preferred candidate or by conducting interviews “that are really for show.”

To avoid that and make sure rules are being followed, employers can consider things like tying a portion of a manager bonus to complying with a variety of policies, specifically those that address diversity, and having equitable compensation among members of their team, according to Webber.

“I think the other thing is [to] listen to their employees and actually make it safe for employees to give them feedback, because employees tend to sort of see where the gaps fall between [an] announced policy and what’s happening in practice,” Webber said. “That’s information that employers can use to tweak their systems and make improvements. But they’re not going to get that feedback if their response to information is to get defensive and shut it down and allow managers to retaliate against those who bring the issues to their attention.”

• Popular hiring strategy copied, but effectiveness unclear.
• Diverse hiring remains a problem in NFL, other companies.

The architect of the National Football League’s “Rooney” Rule says the hiring policy has failed to diversify the league’s top positions because of shortcomings in how it’s implemented, despite being widely adopted by U.S. banks, tech companies, and law firms.

The rule, adopted by the NFL in 2003 and named after the late Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, requires teams to interview at least two candidates of color for head coaching positions. It was criticized in former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores’s discrimination lawsuit, which accuses the league of disingenuous efforts to increase racial representation in top jobs. Nearly two decades after adoption, the league has only one Black head coach, the suit noted.

. . .

Corporate Adoption

Since the NFL created the rule, it has been adopted in some form by companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., and Facebook, as well as some states and cities, to include requirements to interview women and people of color for leadership positions. Some implement the rule for company-wide hiring.

It’s also been incorporated into settlements of shareholder lawsuits that push companies to take a more active role in increasing diversity and inclusion.

“Any time we have such rules in place, they can be manipulated,” said Julie Goldsmith Reiser, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who has included the “Rooney” Rule and other diversity efforts in shareholder settlements, including a $310 million pact with Alphabet Inc.’s Google in 2020. “What we’re talking about here is checking-the-box compliance.”

There has been little empirical evidence that the rule, alone, has led to significant increases in representation either on or off the field. For professional football, specifically, a 2010 study from Indiana University determined that the rule had little impact on hiring more head coaches. However, it said the league should focus on recruiting more African-Americans and Latinos into the pipeline through lower-level coaching positions.

In the corporate world, a 2016 study from the University of Colorado found that when a pool of job candidates contained only one woman or person of color, the chances that person would be hired were essentially zero.

Without accountability, simply changing the composition of a hiring pool won’t make a difference, but there is evidence that broader pressure and ambitious diversity goals have led to some success in recent years, said Stefanie Johnson, a professor at the University of Colorado, who authored the study.

“There is buy-in across corporate America to increase diversity,” Johnson said. “There is cognitive bias and an unconscious bias toward the default candidate. If everyone you interview is a White coach who isn’t Black, it implies that the default must actually be the correct choice.”

Six North Carolina environmental and social justice organizations are resuming a previously filed lawsuit over the ongoing GenX crisis in the Cape Fear River.

But the defendants in this lawsuit aren’t Chemours or DuPont — it’s the federal government, specifically the Environmental Protection Agency.

These six groups (Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, the NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC) are resuming their lawsuit against the EPA after the federal agency granted the groups’ petition requiring there be more health studies done on the effects of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or more commonly known as PFAS, according to a joint press release from the groups.

Just before the end of 2021, the EPA announced it was granting a petition by the six North Carolina groups that would compel companies to conduct testing on certain PFAS compounds, as part of a larger commitment by the Biden-Harris administration to improve society’s understanding of PFAS and the risk they present.

The U.S. Department of Justice has thrown its weight behind 48 attorneys general trying to revive their lawsuit accusing Facebook of illegally monopolizing personal social networking services, telling the D.C. Circuit that a district judge wrongly broke the suit down without looking at the allegations cumulatively.

The DOJ Antitrust Division was one of several parties to file amicus briefs Friday backing the coalition of enforcers from 46 states, the District of Columbia and Guam trying to upend a district court’s conclusion that they waited too long to challenge conduct that included the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp by the company now known as Meta.

. . .

Filed in December 2020, alongside a parallel enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission, the coalition of states accused Facebook of violating the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act, which bars anti-competitive mergers. The FTC case is moving forward after a rejiggered version survived dismissal earlier this month.

Enforcers allege that the social networking giant maintained monopolies and engaged in anti-competitive mergers, including with its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as through restrictions on third-party developers that access its networks.

. . .

In the Facebook appeal, the attorneys general also received backing Friday from a group of former state antitrust enforcement officials and antitrust professors, a group of economists, and antitrust advocacy groups the American Antitrust Institute and the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws.

The former state antitrust officials targeted their brief to support the idea of state enforcers generally, without touching on the merits of the allegations against Facebook. They argued that the district court wrongly deemed the state’s case as filed too late by equating enforcers with “private persons,” suggesting “that state enforcement was less important than federal enforcement.”

. . .

AAI argued in its own amicus brief that the district court never considered the claims against Facebook “as a whole scheme.”

“Properly viewed as a coordinated scheme, all the scheme’s elements are designed with the common purpose of thwarting nascent and future competitors, not inducing the exit of current competitors. The alleged scheme’s common purpose cannot be ignored; it is what makes the scheme a scheme,” the group said.

AAI’s vice president of legal advocacy, Randy M. Stutz, further said in an email that the court was “clearly misguided” in relying on “restrictive unilateral-refusal-to-deal law.”

. . .

Also arguing for a holistic perspective were the economists, who argued in their brief that the pieces of Facebook’s “buy or bury” strategy scooping up or cutting off would-be rivals must be looked as reinforcing one another.

“The district court erred in analyzing and dismissing the ‘buy’ and ‘bury’ components of Facebook’s conduct separately, thereby disregarding both the temporal progression of Facebook’s conduct and the cumulative anti-competitive effects of the conduct,” they said. “The effects of Facebook’s acquisitions and the limitations it placed on interoperability between itself and other applications — including targets that declined Facebook’s buyout offers — should not, and indeed, cannot be decomposed.”

In breaking down those components, “the district court minimized the states’ allegations,” an attorney for the economists, Jessica B. Weiner of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, said in an email.

. . .

The economists are represented by Sharon Robertson and Jessica Weiner of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

The case is New York et al. v. Facebook Inc., case number 21-7078, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The complete article can be viewed here.

The chemical company has connected six Cumberland County homes contaminated with forever chemicals to public water lines and says it has identified 104 more that could benefit.

Representatives of the Chemours chemical company are expected to show up at Laura Adams’ Cumberland County home next week to walk her through the policies, procedures and potential cost of connecting to public water under a new pilot program.

Adams found out in June that the well water at her home on Anniston Street – in the Black Bridge subdivision between Hope Mills and Parkton in Cumberland County – is polluted with per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS, or forever chemicals.

Since then, the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant has been supplying Adams and thousands of other people in Cumberland, Robeson and Bladen counties with either bottled water, under-the-sink reverse osmosis filtration systems or whole-house granular activated carbon systems to keep them from drinking their potentially cancer-causing well water.

Now, as part of the pilot program, Chemours has been reaching out to some homeowners to determine whether they qualify to have their homes connected to public water lines owned by the Fayetteville Public Works Commission. So far, six homes have been connected, Chemours spokeswoman Lisa Randall said.

• $5m Kiisi Fund opens development scheme with focus on human capital.
• BB Fakae, other highly trusted citizens put in charge.

Oniland is witnessing quiet revolution outside the ever-controversial schemes such as the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) or the clean up exercise, but from the activities of its sons that died as martyrs led by Ken Saro-Wiwa.

The then late head of state, Sanni Abacha, may have hanged Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni-9 in 1994 but the worldwide troubles from it did not allow the king to sleep. At the end, the martyrs have won huge enablement that have made them to launch a development fund that is now creating a silent revolution especially in human capital development and other physical infrastructure projects.

The $5m or N2bn seed capital came from $15.5m which families of Saro-Wiwa and the others won in New York in 2009. They used the fund to create a Foundation that is strictly managed along international standards in order to keep delivering value in the area to all Ogoni.

The scheme is managed by an environmentalist, lawyer, former lawmaker, and recently the secretary to Imo State government, Uche Onyeagucha, who hails from Obinze, Owerri West. A true Port Harcourt boy, he worked with Oronto Douglas and Ken Saro-Wiwa to bring justice to Ogoniland on the vast environmental devastation and injustice done to the area. He suffered several detentions in his career of fighting against military dictatorship. He served as legal adviser to the Ijaw Youth Council and founder-member of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, as well as founder, Right to Know, among others. He is chairman of the Foundation.

Now, the Foundation has a Governance/Programme Subcommittee overseen by one of Africa’s most celebrated and trusted education transformers and an international researcher of repute, BB Fakae, who revived the Bori Polytechnic and was later drafted for eight years to rescue the then traumatised and degenerated Rivers State University of Science and Technology, now Rivers State University.

Fakae hails from Kbangha in Nyokhana district of Khana LGA, Rivers State. He was a Commonwealth Academic Staff Scholar and lecturer at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), before transferring his service to his home state starting at the RSUST. He is on record to have transformed the Bori Poly to a strong institution in Rivers State before taking the RSUST to the best state-owned university in Nigeria with earth-shaking legacies such as 1000 computer centre, online examinations, total automation of admission, results, payments, and hostel allocations and student identification.

Other board members include tested men and women such as Chet Tchozewski (President of the RTC Impact Fund), Deezia Hannah Karikpo, Lebatam B. Ndegwe (PhD), a public health sector/toxic exposure expert who is now the project director. It looks like who are put in charge of the foundation is as crucial as the fund itself because of the high propensity for fraud, waste and mismanagement in Nigeria’s national life.

Now, Kiisi has been sponsoring development projects in Ogoni made up of four local council areas of Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme through some accredited civil society organisations (CSOs). They later changed their model and rather created a foundation to directly execute various programmes and projects especially in human capital development and health.

Background of the fund

Ogoni land is now known globally for struggle over environmental disasters. Studies show that in 15 years from 1976 to 1991, there were reportedly 2, 976 oil spills of about 2.1 million barrels of oil in Ogoniland, accounting for about 40 percent of the total oil spills in Shell worldwide.

The struggle of Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists eventually led to the cessation of oil production activities in the area in 1993, but widespread environmental damage was already done.

According to a handbook, one of the first philanthropic actions of the plaintiffs of the 2009 Wiwa vs. Shell lawsuit was the creation of the Kiisi Trust Fund with $5 million out of the $15.5 million out-of-court settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

At the time of the settlement, the Ogoni plaintiffs stated that the Kiisi Trust “should stand as one legacy of the labours of our heroes past.” This incredibly generous and selfless act by the plaintiffs was intended to be used by the Kiisi Trust Fund to support programmes in education, health, community development, and other benefits for the Ogoni people and their communities, including educational endowments, skills development, agricultural development, women’s programs, small enterprise support, and adult literacy.

In 2016, according to records made available to BusinessDay-Sunday, the Trustees of the Kiisi Trust, in a competitive bidding process, hired TrustAfrica to oversee the management of the fund as a donor-advised-fund manager on behalf of the Trustees of the Kiisi Trust in Nigeria. The funds of the Kiisi Trust are kept in separate bank accounts from TrustAfrica’s bank accounts, with most of the funds held in an investment portfolio with a reputable international investment firm, where it is generating additional income for the Kiisi Trust.

The Trust operates as a community foundation that advances the original aims and intentions of the plaintiffs of the Wiwa vs. Shell lawsuit.

. . .

Ogoni future under Kiisi

If this pace of human capital transformation and other physical infrastructure development projects continue undisturbed, the future of Ogoniland would look different, according to some board members.

The management of the Fund was also made stronger by bringing in the likes of Fakae and Ndgwe. The board said a more aggressive fundraising strategy will also be implemented with the aim to at least double the initial endowment to the Trust, allowing it to deepen its support to institutions in the Ogoni area. Perhaps, in the near future, mega organisations such as the HYPREP, NDDC, oil majors, Ecological fund, may find Kiisi worthy for donations to ensure credible application and project execution. That is what a good name and strong brand may do to the Trust if the managers keep building up the reputation capital. “This is coupled with an investment strategy that is low risk, investing in US bonds and conservative markets globally. “Success to the Trust is an empowered Ogoniland with strong institutions mandated to provide different values. “An underlying thread amongst all the components and aspirations is the need to change mindsets from an entitled one to an empowered and accountable one.”

Conclusion

In life and in death, Saro-Wiwa and his co-martyrs have lived on and have continued to make positive impacts on the Ogoni landscape and on the people the playwright so loved. If other development agencies copy the Kiisi formula, Ogoni may become a national model and pacesetter.