An Ontario court denied the appeal of a group of Ecuadorians who sought payment for environmental damage in their country from Chevron Corp.'s Canadian subsidiary.
The three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal of Ontario unanimously upheld a ruling that denied the claim against Chevron Canada and Chevron Canada Finance Ltd., another subsidiary, because they are stand-alone entities. The judges also upheld a requirement for the plaintiffs to pay the Chevron companies C$100,000 in court costs, according to the May 23 decision.
The Ecuadorians claimed in 1993 that Texaco, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, polluted 1,500 square kilometers of rainforest, fouling streams and drinking water. While successful in obtaining a US$9.5 billion judgment in Ecuador's courts, efforts to enforce the ruling outside the country have failed. Courts in the U.S. determined that the judgment had been obtained by fraud, a finding that was affirmed by a lower Canadian court. The plaintiffs can still appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
"What we are really being invited to do is to assist the appellants in doing an end-run around the United States court order by breaking with well-established jurisprudence and creating an exception to the principle of corporate separateness," Justice C. William Hourigan said in the decision. Chevron has no remaining assets in Ecuador that could be claimed under the judgment.
The Canadian decision follows rulings in "the United States, Brazil, and Argentina that confirm the fraudulent Ecuadorian judgment should be unenforceable in any court that respects the rule of law," R. Hewitt Pate, general counsel for Chevron, said in a statement. "Chevron will resist any enforcement effort and seek to hold anyone who would attempt to profit from the fraudulent judgment accountable to the full extent of the law."
(Yaiguaje v. Chevron Corporation, 2018 ONCA 472, docket numbers C63309 and C63310)
