On Jan. 26, nearly a year after Chevron Corp. asked a New York federal court to block enforcement of a multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador over oil contamination in the Amazon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit said no in the most sweeping possible terms. The appellate panel concluded that a global and pre-emptive “anti-enforcement injunction” by “disappointed litigants in foreign cases” would be “radical,” unprecedented, ungrounded in statute and potentially offensive to the principle of comity. Where does Chevron go from here?
In the New York RICO action against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Chevron may press toward trial on all other counts, while renewing the motion to attach its adversaries’ assets that was denied on Jan. 6, this time asking only for damages that are already ascertainable.
