Ontario Court Allows Ecuadorian Tribes to Proceed with 9.5 Billion Dollar Judgement Against Chevron!
Last edited Tue Dec 17, 2013, 11:53 PM - Edit history (1)
AMAZING!
Toronto, Canada –
Indigenous and farmer communities in Ecuador scored a major victory over Chevron today when an Ontario appeals court ruled they have the right to pursue enforcement of a $9.5 billion Ecuadorian court judgment against Chevron's assets in Canada.
The court also ordered Chevron's two Canadian subsidiaries to pay $100,000 in costs to the Ecuadorians.
Members of roughly 80 indigenous and farmer communities in Ecuador's northern Amazon region, the villagers won their judgment in 2011 after a hotly-contested eight-year trial that Chevron insisted take place in the South American nation. But Chevron has refused to pay the judgment and has stripped most of its assets from Ecuador to avoid collection, forcing the villagers to file lawsuits to satisfy the judgment in places where Chevron has assets.
The Canadian appellate panel took wry note of Chevron's long history of forum shopping, citing the company's earlier promise to U.S. courts to abide by any adverse judgment in Ecuador as a condition of the case being moved there in 2001. The Ontario court also took a veiled swipe at U.S. federal judge Lewis A. Kaplan for trying to issue an injunction purporting to block the Ecuador judgment. A U.S. appeals court unanimously reversed Kaplan just last year.
The latest decision represents a stunning reversal of fortune for the oil giant, which just finished a six-week trial in New York before Judge Kaplan where it alleged the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and their lawyers had obtained the Ecuador judgment by fraud. The Ecuadorians assert that Chevron is using the fraud allegations to distract attention from its environmental crimes and growing liability in Ecuador. For counterclaims filed against Chevron in the New York case.
http://amazonwatch.org/news/2013/1217-canada-orders-enforcement-action-to-proceed-against-chevron-in-ecuador-pollution-case
EDIT: Just posted this link to a minutes video about what Chevron did. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017165307
= new reply since forum marked as read
