The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday that a group of Ecuadoreans can use an Ontario court in an attempt to collect billions of dollars from Chevron for environmental damage.
The ruling is the latest step in a 13-year legal battle over the contamination of a rain forest in Ecuador, where Texaco had oil operations. The lawsuit has pitted Ecuadorean villagers in the region of Lago Agrio against Chevron, which bought Texaco.
While a trial court in Ecuador initially awarded the villagers $17.2 billion, an appeals court reduced the damages to $9.5 billion. It was one of the largest judgments imposed by a court for environmental contamination.
But Chevron has not paid the group and has waged a vigorous legal battle against the Ecuadoreans, as well as against their American lawyers in the United States, where it argued that the original judgment had been obtained through fraud. The company has declined to accept responsibility for polluting the rain forest, drawing the condemnation of international human rights and environmental activists.
In Canada, the Ecuadoreans are fighting to seize the assets of Chevron’s subsidiary. Chevron countered that the Ecuadoreans should not be allowed to collect their debt in Canada because they have no direct link to the country. The Canadian court sided with the Ecuadoreans, saying the local courts were obliged to respect the decisions of foreign counterparts.
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