Court refuses to apply in Argentina ruling against Chevron issued in Ecuador
Ecuadornews:
An Argentine court decided to reject the execution in the country of a judgment handed down in Ecuador against Chevron, for which the US oil company would have had to pay compensation of 9.5 billion dollars for environmental damage in the Amazon.
The payment of that amount by Chevron in Argentina had been requested by lawyers representing a group of indigenous people and settlers from the Ecuadorian Amazon, who sued the US oil company for contamination in 2011.
The ruling, issued on Tuesday after an appeal, states that “local courts lack international jurisdiction to hear the main claim because there is no reasonable connection between the case and the forum.”
The same compensation was also requested from the United States Court, where Chevron has its headquarters, to know what their assets are, and from there the information was obtained from a subsidiary in Argentina.
An Argentine judge declared this legal remedy “irrelevant” last November.
The judge argued that such request “is res judicata”, since the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina had already expressed in June 2013 dismissing the executor
He also stated that “the appellant companies have not participated in the lawsuit” since Chevron Corporation and Chevron Argentina SRL (the subsidiary in the country) “are different legal entities”.
This same request of the Ecuadorian Justice was also rejected in countries such as the United States, Brazil and Canada. (I)