Chevron lawyers puzzled by group’s case
A court in Ontario lacks jurisdiction to enforce judgment made in Ecuador, oil firm insists
Any “thinking person” can see that the assets of Chevron Corp.’s Canadian unit are assets of the parent company, the lawyer for a group of aggrieved Ecuadorans told an Ontario court.
But Alan Lenczner’s assertion brought a swift retort from Mr. Justice David Brown: “The average thinking person, they don’t necessarily know the law.”
The law, he told Lenczner “isn’t a survey taken on the steps of City Hall.”
The two were jousting over the Ecuadorans’ plea to the Ontario courts to enforce a massive judgment against Chevron for wreaking havoc on the Ecuadoran landscape.
Chevron is seeking to have the case dismissed arguing that an Ontario court lacks jurisdiction to enforce a judgment made in Ecuador against a company headquartered in the U.S. The judgment, originally set at $18.3 billion, has been adjusted upward to $19 billion by the Ecuadoran courts. The environmental damage was caused by Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001. Since Chevron has no significant assets remaining in Ecuador, the Ecuadorans have come to Ontario to make good on the judgment. They’ve also filed actions in Argentina and Brazil. Chevron Canada has significant assets, including stakes in the Athabasca oil sands, in oil fields off Newfoundland, But lawyers for Chevron have argued that the judgment is only against the parent company — and the Ecuadorans have no claim against Chevron Canada or its assets. Chevron Corp., the parent company against whom the judgment was made, has no assets in Canada because they’re held through its subsidiary, Chevron Canada, they say. Lenczner said that if Chevron indeed has no Canadian assets, the company doesn’t need to defend them so vigorously. “If you don’t have any assets here, as Chevron says, let it go,” he told the court. “Why do you have seven lawyers here?”
In his factum filed with the court, Lenczner described Chevron as a “scofflaw” that’s refusing to pay its debts.
While company lawyers described a sprawling, decentralized company, Lenczner said that key policy and major investment decisions are tightly controlled by the parent.
Operating units have strict limits on how much money they can spend without seeking permission from the parent, he said. The twoday hearing on Chevron’s motion for dismissal wrapped up Friday.