After years of motions and a five-week trial, a federal jury has cleared Chevron Corp. of responsibility for any human rights abuses during a violent protest in 1998 on a company oil platform in Nigeria.

Nearly 10 years ago, villagers in the Nigerian delta protested Chevron's alleged pollution of local fishing grounds and farms by occupying the company's platform.

Chevron claimed that the protesters held more than 100 of its workers hostage for three days and didn't respond to negotiations. It "requested the rescue as a reasonable response" and claimed that the demonstration turned violent only after protesters attacked the military.

The villager's attorneys argued that the villagers were peaceful and preparing to leave when they were attacked by the military which killed two protesters and injured others.

They argued that the military acted as an agent of Chevron, and the company should be liable for its actions.

Jurors unanimously backed Chevron's claim that the Nigerian government was responsible for the violent response, denying all of the villlagers' claims, including those for torture and wrongful death.

Although the Alien Tort Claims Act was adopted in 1789, the Act has never been used successfully at trial.

Related claims have, however, been settled out of court, most notably a lawsuit last year accusing Yahoo Inc. of illegally helping the Chinese government jail and torture two journalists.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have decried the growing popularity of such lawsuits, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to take up one of the cases to clarify and narrow the scope of the law.

While claims under the Act have been unsuccessfull in court, the years that such cases can take before settlement, the attorneys' fees and the bad publicity they generate can provide plaintiffs a victory of sorts.

The Chevron case will at least give US-based multinational corporations some relief from concerns over the potential liability of such cases.