Opinion ID: 2646624
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Underlying Litigation in Ecuador

Text: The discovery dispute before this Court is only a minor part of a large 2 Case: 12-16216 Date Filed: 12/18/2013 Page: 3 of 23 international controversy. It began in 1993 when a group of Ecuadorian plaintiffs filed a class action complaint against a subsidiary of Texaco, Inc. in the Southern District of New York. The Ecuadorian plaintiffs alleged that Texaco’s oil exploration in the Amazonian rain forest polluted private and public lands in Ecuador and that Texaco was responsible for the plaintiffs’ oil-related health problems and the environmental contamination of the plaintiffs’ property. See Jota v. Texaco, Inc., 157 F.3d 153, 155-56 (2d Cir. 1998). The Southern District of New York dismissed the case on the basis of forum non conveniens, Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc., 142 F. Supp. 2d 534, 554 (S.D.N.Y. 2001), and the Second Circuit affirmed, 303 F.3d 470, 480 (2d Cir. 2002). After this ruling, some of the plaintiffs filed similar claims in Lago Agrio, Ecuador in 2003. By then, Chevron had merged with Texaco, thereby assuming liability for Texaco’s operations. See Republic of Ecuador v. Chevron, 638 F.3d 384, 388 n.1, 389 n.3 (2d Cir. 2011). The Lago Agrio court in Ecuador issued its judgment in 2011, awarding the Ecuadorian plaintiffs approximately $18.2 billion in damages against Chevron. The first-level appellate court affirmed this judgment in full, but Ecuador’s highest court recently reduced the judgment to $9.1 billion.