2nd Circuit Slams Chevron Order as 'Radical'
2nd Circuit Slams Chevron Order as 'Radical'
MANHATTAN (CN) - After months of delay, the 2nd Circuit explained Thursday why it struck down a "radical" injunction that would block Ecuadorean natives from collecting an $18 billion environmental verdict against Chevron anywhere in the world.
"The story of the conflict between Chevron and residents of the Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorian Amazon must be among the most extensively told in the history of the American federal judiciary," according to the 30-page opinion authored by Judge Gerard Lynch.
Spanning nearly two decades, it began when a group of Ecuadorean aborigines sued Chevron's predecessor Texaco in Manhattan federal court in 1993, for what they call the "Amazon's Chernobyl." The lawsuit charged that Texaco's drilling from 1964 to 1992 decimated rainforest lands, polluted the groundwater and sparked cancer clusters in a region home to 30,000 people.
Texaco attacked the New York venue choice and pushed to dismiss the case in favor of the Amazonian region of Lago Agrio, Ecuador. That aim succeeded after Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001. But the Lago Agrio court nevertheless slapped the oil giant with an $18.2 billion verdict on Feb. 14, 2011.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/26/43387.htm