lawsuit

Environmental organization Milieudefensie is filing a lawsuit against Shell in an effort to force the Dutch oil and gas company to adjust its policy to prevent further damage to the climate, Milieudefensie announced in a press conference at Shell's former headquarters in Amsterdam, ANP reports.

Adopted children from Sri Lanka and Indonesia filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government over errors in their adoption procedures in the 1980's. They want the government to compensate the high costs they're incurring in the search for their origin and biological parents, according to a Zembla broadcast on Wednesday, NU.nl reports.

Last year Zembla reported that adoption files of children from Sri Lanka and Indonesia, among others, were falsified on a large scale and that biological parents did not always give their child up voluntarily. 

A 37-weeks-pregnant woman is suing the Bravis hospital in Roosendaal for refusing to let her use her own midwife during birth. The midwife is not affiliated with the care network the hospital works with, and the hospital therefore refused her. "This is in conflict with the right to self-determination and freedom of choice in healthcare', Anniek de Ruijter of women's rights organization Clara Wichmann said to RTL Nieuws.

The municipalities of Amsterdam and Utrecht announced that they will support a lawsuit filed against the tobacco industry.

The Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital in Amsterdam filed a lawsuit against the four large tobacco factories in the Netherlands, accusing them of aggravated assault with death as result. According to the hospital, the fight against cancer is a losing battle as long as the tobacco industry continues to deliberately get people addicted, AD reports.

After his acquittal by the Argentinian court on Wednesday, former Transavia pilot Julio Poch is considering suing the Dutch and Argentinian States, his lawyer Geert Jan Knoops said to the Volkskrant. Poch was acquitted of involvement in so-called death flights during the military dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. He was arrested in Spain in 2009 after a tip from the Dutch judiciary and extradited to Argentina, where he spent eight years in custody before his acquittal.

In the summary proceedings court on Wednesday, environmental organization Milieudefensie demanded that the Dutch state immediately implement measures to reduce air pollution. Campaign leader Anne Knol calls it "absolutely necessary that measures be taken quickly to make the air healthier", NOS reports. 

The organization already filed an ordinary lawsuit for this, but Milieudefensie thinks this will take too long.

On Friday the Amsterdam court held the first day of trial in a lawsuit over a Buddha statue containing a mummy. A group of Chinese villagers sued Dutch collector Oscar van Overeem claiming that the statue in his possession was stolen from their village, YangChun, in 1995, the Volkskrant reports.

Lawyers in 17 countries are following Dutch lawyers' lead in suing the tobacco industry for attempted murder or aggravated assault. Anti-smoking organizations and lawyers from 15 countries gathered in Geneva recently to discuss the Dutch appraoch to the, until now, unique case, AD reports.

Germany and Belgium are also interested, but did not make it to the meeting in Switzerland, according to the newspaper.

The parents of Tristan van der Vlis is not responsible for their son killing five people and hurting 17 others in a shooting in Alphen aan den Rijn in 2011, the court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday. According to the court, Van der Vlis' parents couldn't know beforehand that their son was planning the mass shooting, ANP reports.

Education organization BON thinks that Dutch universities and colleges offer too many courses in English instead of Dutch to attract foreign students, instead of focusing on whether the switch to English will improve the course. The organization is threatening a lawsuit against the universities and colleges if the new government doesn't implement stricter rules for tertiary institutions in their government agreement, AD reports.