The ruling electrified environmental activists and reverberated through corporate boardrooms around the world. A judge in a dilapidated one-room courthouse in northeastern Ecuador had found Chevron Corporation, the United States’ second largest oil company, responsible for the pollution of the waters and lands of 30,000 settlers and indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The damages, eventually set at nearly US$19 billion for environmental remediation, treatment of contamination-related illnesses and compensation, marked a record for an environmental lawsuit. “This is the first time that indigenous people have sued a multinational corporation in the country where the crime was committed and won,” said the San Francisco-based environmental group Amazon Watch, in a statement after the Feb. 14, 2011 ruling. “This is a triumph... [Log in to read more]