Amazon toxic waste case may set a legal precedent

According to Amazon Watch, an environmental and human rights organisation based in San Francisco, “of 45 oil production sites inspected by court-appointed technical experts, many of which were part of an earlier remediation, several show concentrations of carcinogenic chemicals at hundreds and sometimes thousands of times higher than US norms.”
In November 1993, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of residents of the rain forest area known as ‘Oriente’ was launched in a US District Court in New York.
Although the plaintiffs wanted the case to be tried in New York, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that it should be conducted in Ecuador. But in a significant decision, the court also stated that any judgment against the oil company would be enforced in the US.
US courts will also reassert jurisdiction if Chevron refuses to co-operate with the litigation in Ecuador.
The suit charges that Texaco dumped nearly 70mn liters of toxic waste into hundreds of unlined open pits, and from there the waste seeped into estuaries and rivers thus exposing residents to carcinogenic pollutants.