Ecuador court orders Chevron to pay $8 bln -lawyer

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: Reuters

An Ecuadorean lawyer for the plaintiffs said on Monday that a court in the Amazon city of Lago Agrio had ordered U.S. oil giant Chevron (CVX.N) to pay more than $8 billion in environmental damages.

Plaintiffs had originally asked for $27 billion. (Reporting by Quito Newsroom)

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/14/ecuador-chevron-plaintiff-idUSN149620320110214

[L. Coyote]

1. K & REC

[Judi Lynn]

2. AP: Lawyer: Judge fines Chevron at least $8 billion in Ecuador oil contamination case

Lawyer: Judge fines Chevron at least $8 billion in Ecuador oil contamination case
By Associated Press
2:57 p.m. EST, February 14, 2011

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and fined it at least $8 billion, the plaintiffs' lead attorney told The Associated Press.

Chevron said it would appeal and called the ruling "illegitimate and unenforceable" in a news release.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, called the judgment "a great step that we have made toward the crystalization of justice."

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and fined it at least $8 billion, the plaintiffs' lead attorney told The Associated Press.

Chevron said it would appeal and called the ruling "illegitimate and unenforceable" in a news release.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, called the judgment "a great step that we have made toward the crystalization of justice."

Fajardo said by telephone that he had just received the 187-page ruling and needed to digest it before commenting further.

More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-ecuador-chevron,0,7392267.story

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Viva_La_Revolution.

[coyote]

4. Now we're talking.

These are the damage amounts that should be rewarded when corporations screw up. Not these piddly million dollar damages that are given out in the US. When corporations screw up, they should pay heavily in amounts they understand.

[truedelphi]

5. Good t o hear this. Is this award to the

Ecuadorian people enforceable?

[AngryAmish]

6. Be nice to take 1/3 of that judgment...

[emad]

7. "the product of fraud (and) contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence".

The corporation has long contended that the court-appointed expert in the case was unduly influenced by the plaintiffs.

Its statement described the ruling as "the product of fraud (and) contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12460333



I'm with Chevron 100% of the way having followed the dispute from the time of the original Texaco involvement in the 1990s.


Chevron's purchase of Texaco saw its lawyers negotiate with the Ecuador government for nearly one year when every single legal, scientific and environmental aspect of the pollution was put under the microscope.

Ecuador gave Chevron its unequivocal assurance that there would be no liability in the future.

Contracts were exchanged on that basis.

Since then evidence has piled up about the state owned Petroecuador involvement in the damage.

What has followed is called conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, to extort and to commit fraud.

And it's criminal.

[rabs]

8. Chevron fined $9.5 billion in Ecuador

Source: The Associated Press




By GONZALO SOLANO and FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Gonzalo Solano And Frank Bajak, Associated Press – 1 hr 15 mins ago
QUITO, Ecuador – An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday in an epic environmental case that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil drilling contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay $9.5 billion in damages and cleanup costs.

The amount — $8.6 billion plus a legally mandated 10 percent reparations fee — was far below the $27.3 billion award recommended by a court-appointed expert but appeared to be the highest damage award ever issued in an environmental lawsuit.

But whether the plaintiffs — including indigenous groups who say their hunting and fishing grounds in Amazon River headwaters were decimated by toxic wastewater that also raised the cancer rate — can collect remains to be seen.

In a statement Chevron called the decision "illegitimate and unenforceable" and said it would appeal. It has long contended it could never get a fair trial in Ecuador and has removed all assets from this politically volatile Andean country, whose leftist president, Rafael Correa, had voiced support for the plaintiffs. Chevron, which earned $19.1 billion last year, said it did not believe the judgment "enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law."





Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110215/ap_on_bi_ge/lt_ecuador_chevron

---

Okay, this legal battle could go on for years. The ruling may not benefit the current generation of the affected indigenous people of Ecuador.

But it leaves a big black eye on Chevron, like the company's sludge that contaminated the natives' jungle homelands and rivers.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Article by Greg Palast: Chevron Runs from Judgment

Chevron Runs from Judgment
in Ecuador
Monday, February 14, 2011
by Greg Palast

Chevron petroleum Corporation is attempting to slither out of an $8 billion judgment rendered yesterday by a trial court in Ecuador for cancer deaths, illnesses and destruction caused by its Texaco unit.

I've been there, in Ecuador.

I met the victims. They didn't lose their shrimp boats; they lost their kids. Emergildo Criollo, Chief of the Cofan Natives of the Amazon, told me about his three-year-old. "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood." Then he died.

When I showed Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez the epidemiological studies tracing childhood cancers to their oil, he sneered and said , "And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, must prove caused by crude or by petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible."

The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."

President Barack Obama has said that the British-based BP must pay for all the damage it caused in the Gulf.

I've just returned from the Gulf and I can tell you, it's grim, it's terrible. But compared to the damage caused by Chevron-Texaco, the Gulf blow-out is a picnic.

So now, Mr. President, will you stand by your words and tell this renegade, deadly US corporation to pay for the damage they have done?

At the end of my meeting with the oil company lawyers, I show them a document in which Chevron-Texaco directs its underlings to destroy evidence.

More:
http://www.gregpalast.com/chevron-runs-from-judgmentin-ecuador/

[dipsydoodle]

10. Chevron fined for Amazon pollution by Ecuador court

Source: BBC News

A court in Ecuador has fined US oil giant Chevron $8.6bn (£5.3bn) for polluting a large part of the country's Amazon region.

The oil firm Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits and Amazon rivers.

Campaigners say crops were damaged and farm animals killed, and that local cancer rates increased.

Condemning the ruling as fraudulent, Chevron said it would appeal.



Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12460333

[dipsydoodle]

11. Chevron fined for Amazon pollution by Ecuador court

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[LuckyLib]

12. For background on this see the film "Crude" -- http://www.crudethemovie.com/