Chevron
Remediation Agreement and was thus released from current and future liability.
In November 1993, seventy-four Ecuadorians filed a class action lawsuit against Texaco in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs in Aquinda v. Texaco, Inc. purported to represent more than 30,000 peo- ple living in the Oriente region who had suffered damages as a result of Texaco’s operations in that area from 1964 – 1990. In particular, the plaintiffs alleged that Texaco had improperly disposed of large quantities of toxic by-products and that the Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline they constructed was leaking excessive amounts of petroleum into the environment. The plaintiffs asked for money damages and also sought equitable relief to rem- edy the contamination afflicting their properties and water supply.
On November 12, 1996, the U.S. District Court granted Texaco’s motion to dismiss on the grounds of forum non conveniens, interna- tional comity, and failure to join indispensable parties. The District Court stated that Ecuador was the appropriate forum since the plaintiffs are residents of the Oriente region, and the al- leged harm occurred on Ecuadorian soil. Further- more, the District Court determined that based on principles of international comity, they were obliged to give deference to Ecuador’s courts in exercising jurisdiction. Lastly, the action was dis- missed because the Court determined that the equitable relief sought by the plaintiffs could not be achieved without including Petroecuador, the sole owner of the consortium since 1992, in the action.
Texaco’s legal victory was short lived. In 2001, Chevron acquired Texaco through a merger agreement, and in May 2003, overlapping plain- tiffs from Aquinda filed suit against Chevron in the Superior Court of Justice of Nueva Loja, Lago Agrio, Province of Sucumbio, Ecuador. The plaintiffs based their lawsuit on provisions
of the Ecuadorian Constitution and the Environ- mental Management Act of 1999 (EMA), the lat- ter of which recognized a party’s ability to ob- tain damages individually and on behalf of their community for breaches of environmental laws that caused deterioration of health and damage to the environment. The primary relief sought by the plaintiffs was the repair of environmen- tal damages and the elimination and removal of contaminating elements still threatening the environment and the health of Oriente’s inhabit- ants.
Chevron offered numerous defenses to the plaintiff’s claims. First, Chevron argued that the 1999 EMA could not be applied retroactively to Texaco’s operations in Ecuador; second, Chev- ron asserted that they were not a proper party to the litigation since they were never a part of the consortium and only acquired Texaco in 2001 after the Remediation Agreement and Final Act had already released Texaco from liability; and third, Chevron claimed the plaintiffs lacked standing since their complaint failed to establish that they themselves were personally harmed, as required by Article 43 of the EMA.
The Superior Court of Justice deferred ruling on Chevron’s defenses and proceeded to trial in Oc- tober 2003. At the beginning of the trial the par- ties agreed to a joint plan for experts from both sides to conduct inspections of designated well sites to determine the presence of environmen- tal contamination, followed by a determination of the cause of any contamination and the cost of remediation. Forty-seven well sites were vis- ited and Chevron’s experts submitted 45 reports that showed their remediation efforts had met applicable standards, and that the sites were no longer a risk to human health. The experts for the plaintiffs, however, were allegedly less thorough during their site examinations. Chevron contend- ed that the plaintiff’s experts failed to report on over half of the samples they collected, and that the samples they did submit were analyzed by
ILSA Quarterly » volume 20 » issue 4 » May 2012
69
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96