US top court hands Chevron victory in Ecuador pollution case

In August 2016, a USA appeals court blocked the enforcement of a US$9.5-billion judgment against Chevron, upholding a lower court ruling that had found that a pollution judgment against the USA oil major in Ecuador was the product of fraud and racketeering, and therefore, unenforceable in the U.S.

The justices dismissed an appeal by New York-based lawyer Steven Donziger who argued that a federal appeals court had exceeded its authority by letting Chevron use a USA racketeering law to block enforcement of the Ecuadorian payment.

America's top justices turned down the request to hear the Ecuadorians' appeal, upholding a previous U.S. court decision which cited "a parade of corrupt actions" by plaintiffs' representatives to obtain the judgement in Ecuador.

The legal fight stems from Chevron's 2001 purchase of a subsidiary that operated in Ecuador.

Although Ecuador's highest court later cut that amount to $9.5 billion, Chevron vowed not to pay. Judge Kaplan said the case had been corrupted by American lawyer Steven Donziger and Ecuadorean lawyers, who allegedly submitted fraudulent evidence and coerced and bribed an Ecuadorean judge to rule in their favor in 2011.

"The facts of the Ecuadoran judicial extortion scheme and the illegality of the plaintiffs' lawyer misconduct have been finally and conclusively affirmed by the legal system of the United States", said R. Hewitt Pate, Chevron's general counsel, in an email.

"Today's decision is an important step toward bringing this illegal scheme to a final conclusion".

"The Supreme Court's decision closes a chapter and will allow the global public to properly focus on the true substance of the case", Donziger said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan barred enforcement of the judgment in 2014, citing the corruption used to obtain it.

The lawsuit, based in the Ecuadoran town of Lago Agrio, became an global cause celebre and the subject of a 2009 documentary, "Crude".

Chevron did not dispute that pollution occurred, but instead argued that the company was not liable, citing a 1998 agreement in which Texaco agreed to clean a number of waste pits and the Ecuadorian government absolved the company from further liability.