Latin America
Related: About this forumChevron Defeated in Ecuador's Constitutional Court
Posted by News Editor in Land Use, Latest News, RSS on July 31, 2018 11:13 am
QUITO, Ecuador, July 31, 2018 (ENS) In a benchmark pollution case, Ecuadors Constitutional Court has rejected Chevrons final appeal of a $9.5 billion pollution judgment that found the company deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste onto Indigenous lands in the Amazon rainforest.
The unanimous 8-0 decision, issued in a 151-page document published July 11, was a total victory for the Indigenous groups that brought the case and a rejection of all of Chevrons claims.
The Court rejected Chevrons allegations that it was victimized by fraud, and the court threw out the companys claim that Ecuadorian courts had no jurisdiction over the matter.
The decision also raises the total number of appellate judges in Ecuador and Canada who have ruled against Chevron on either the underlying merits of the case or its fraud claims to 29.
More:
http://ens-newswire.com/2018/07/31/chevron-defeated-in-ecuadors-constitutional-court/
enough
(13,237 posts)from the article:
Donziger praised the decision from the Constitutional Court. It is long past time for Chevron to come to grips with the fact that it has now lost in four separate courts in Ecuador, the country where it insisted the trial be held, based on evidence it deliberately dumped toxic waste and decimated Indigenous peoples, he said. A litigation strategy that consists of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create fake evidence and attack lawyers, rather than deal with the merits of a case, is ultimately a losing strategy for Chevron shareholders.
But Donziger is also losing due to his involvement in this case.
On July 18, a New York state appellate court took the unusual step of suspending Donzigers law license without a hearing, leading to shock among lawyers who have followed his long-running battle with Chevron and the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher over the clean-up of the oil majors massive pollution in Ecuadors Amazon.
Short-circuiting the legal process to deny Donziger a hearing, staff attorneys at the state bar grievance committee, which regulates attorney conduct, characterized him as an immediate threat to the public order even though he has not received one client complaint in 25 years of legal practice and has won numerous honors and testimonials for his public service work.
In comments last week, other attorneys and activists, including esteemed First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus, Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, human rights lawyer Aaron Page, and Greenpeace Co-founder Rex Weyler, said they were shocked by the New York Bars decision to suspend Donziger.
MORE AT LINK