Court hearings were set to begin this month on a lawsuit in which Indians from the Ecuadorian Amazon charge ChevronTexaco with responsibility for ongoing contamination allegedly caused by oil operations carried out here from 1972 to 1992. After efforts to get the case heard in U.S. courts failed, 47 plaintiffs from four Amazon tribes are now resorting to Ecuador’s court system, which they had bypassed initially out of concern it would not give them a fair hearing. In May, their attorneys filed suit in Superior Court in Nueva Loja, capital of Sucumbios, the Amazon province where most of the oil activity occurred. Alberto Guerra, the judge handling the case, notified the two sides early this month that hearings would begin on Oct. 21. The plaintiffs... [Log in to read more]
