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| US judge rejects $9bn ruling against Chevron |
| 2014-03-05 |
| [Al Jazeera] A US judge has upheld Chevron's allegations that an Ecuadorian court decision ordering it to pay $9.5bn for oil pollution in the Amazon jungle was fraudulently obtained. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan concluded on Tuesday that plaintiffs in the 2011 case and their lawyers committed a host of corrupt actions, including ghost-writing the original judgment, submitting fraudulent evidence and bribery. Witnesses in the case included a former Ecuadorian judge who admitted to accepting bribes. In barring enforcement of the original fine in US courts, the decision handed Chevron a big win in its long fight with Ecuador. "Justice is not served by inflicting injustice. The ends do not justify the means," Kaplan wrote. He said it was a sad outcome to have to rule that the Ecuadorian court judgment "was obtained by corrupt means", because it will perhaps never be known whether there was a case to be made against Chevron, the San Ramon, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,-based oil company. Kaplan concluded that Chevron "might bear some responsibility" for pollution in Ecuador. "It is distressing that the course of justice was perverted," he wrote in a nearly 500-page ruling that followed a trial last year. The verdict was a setback to the indigenous people from Ecuador's oil-rich Lago Agrio in the eastern region of Oriente, who have long sought compensation for pollution by US oil company Texaco between the 1970s and early 1990s. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Chevron did acquire potential liability when it bought Texaco - that isn't the issue. To me the real point is that Texaco should not have been liable either, because they remediated the sites to the better than the standards expected at the time, and turned the properties over to the Ecuadorian national oil company - which had been their partner and then became the sole owner and operator. Based on how I KNOW other national oil companies maintain and operate when compared with majors like Chevron, I am virtually certain that most of the alleged damage occurred after Texaco left. And based on what has come out in these court hearings and how I KNOW sleazebag lawyers operate, I am virtually certain than most of the alleged damage is not even real. It's all about deep pockets and corrupt governments. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2014-03-05 12:28 |
| #1 Makes sense, Chevron didn't even own the company then. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2014-03-05 05:42 |