Chevron in Ecuador

The archive of the Clean Up Ecuador campaign website


Canada Opens Its Doors for Collection of the Judgement Against Chevron

UDAPT
4 September 2015 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at +1.703.798.3109


Quito, Ecuador – After eight months of waiting, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the ruling on the appeal by the Ontario Court of Appeals, which recognizes that the Canadian courts do have jurisdiction for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs to continue the homologation process of the sentence in which 30,000 indigenous and peasants won against Chevron after proving the company’s responsibility for environmental damages caused in their territories.

The ruling given in second instance by the Court of Appeals recognizes that the Ecuadorian victims could carry out the sentence that requires the payment of USD 9,500 million to Chevron for pollution affecting the Ecuadorian Amazon. This decision was notified to the parties on December 17, 2013.

Humberto Piaguaje, the Coordinator of the Union of People Affected by Texaco (UDAPT) exhorts that this is one of the most significant resolutions Ecuadorian plaintiffs have achieved after the first ruling and its respective ratifications. With this resolution the affected people in Ecuador “after 22 years we can perform actions to collect the judgment against Chevron and immediately start repairing our territories," said the leader of UDAPT.

According to Piaguaje the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada is one of the greatest defeats for Chevron as it shows that "the Canadian justice operates effectively and demonstrates that each country is independent and sovereign, so the intent of the Oil Company to extend the ruling of a U.S court to avoid paying the judgment will not be possible in sovereign courts" referring to the ruling issued by the New York judge Lewis Kaplan, who avoiding due process ruled that there was collusion of those affected Ecuadorians to "extort" the company.