More than a decade of legal wrangling ended when Shell announced it would pay the settlement to the nine families, though the company maintained it didn't play a role in the death of the activists protesting against the oil industry in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta.

"We litigated with Shell for 13 years and, at the end of the day, the plaintiffs are going to be compensated for the human rights violations they suffered," said a lawyer for the families, Paul Hoffman.

The protesters who hail from Nigeria's Ogoni tribe, including well-known delta activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, were executed by a military tribunal for their alleged involvement in the deaths of four tribal leaders in the delta in 1994.

The lawsuit contended that Shell supplied the Nigerian military with weapons during the 1990s and employed its own armed force to hunt down activists protesting Shell's presence and practices in the region.

Shell has continually denied any involvement in the activists' death.

The case was slated to be heard in a U.S. court under the Alien Tort Act of 1789, which states that a U.S. court can hear cases brought by foreign nationals alleging human rights violations abroad.

The act was used most recently in a Florida federal court earlier this year when a group of Liberians accused Charles Taylor, the son of former Liberian leader Chuck Taylor, of a series of human rights violations and murders. The younger Taylor was convicted of his crimes committed during the Liberian civil war in the 1990s and sentenced to 97 years in prison.

The settlement was a landmark of sorts for Nigerian activists against the oil companies operating in the delta, as it marked the first time a group of Nigerian activists prompted a multinational oil giant into conceding to a large settlement.

Plaintiffs in a case against U.S. oil company Chevron late last year were not as fortunate.

In December 2008, following several weeks of testimony that included recollections of torture and killings, Chevron was cleared in a lawsuit brought forward by a group of Nigerians who accused the company of colluding with the Nigerian military in the late 1990s to break up a protest over company practices in the delta.

The suit, brought up by Nigerian Larry Bowoto and an indigenous rights group known as the "Concerned Ilaje Citizens," failed to find Chevron responsible for the deaths of two persons during demonstrations in 1998 at an offshore oil platform in protest against the company's economic and environmental impact on the region.

Despite their loss, lawyers for the plaintiffs called the trial a "victory" that could prompt Chevron to act in a "reasonable, non-violent way" in settling future disputes in the delta.

"Although the plaintiffs did not prevail today, Chevron now knows that it cannot conceal complicity in human rights abuses from public scrutiny," said Richard Herz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

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