In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Latin & South America

11 Sep

I have been in Santiago, Chile for the past few days keynoting an international law conference at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. It's an impressive law school in one of the most beautiful cities in South America. I was fortunate to arrive on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the defining moment in Chilean history: Augusto Pinochet's...

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24 Aug

Although the government of Colombia was far from pleased when the ICJ issued a judgment last November in a long-running territorial dispute with Nicaragua, it did not go so far as to say it would simply ignore the ruling.  But Colombia's vice president Angelino Garzon seems to be hinting in recent comments that Colombia is prepared to do just that. “The...

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02 May

An Ontario court in Yaiguaje v. Chevron has dismissed the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' efforts to enforce the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron Canada. Essentially the dismissal rests on the doctrine of the separate legal identities of parent and subsidiary corporations. Chevron has no assets in Canada, and the subsidiaries' assets there cannot be attached to enforce a judgment against the parent...

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01 May

This report out of Prensa Latina in Havana suggests that the ICJ has expressed some sort of positive opinion on quality of Bolivia's case against Chile. In a press conference, [Bolivian Foreign Minister] Choquehuanca announced the International Court notified Chile on the start of the process and reasserted the Bolivian will of not affecting the bilateral relations with Chile. He also said the...

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29 Apr

Last week, the government of Bolivia filed an application in the International Court of Justice against Chile arguing that Chile has breached its "obligation to negotiate in good faith and effectively with Bolivia in order to reach an agreement granting Bolivia a fully sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean." Is it just me, or is this the weakest case ever filed at the...

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12 Feb

Neither the arbitral tribunal's order demanding Ecuador act to stop enforcement of the $18 Billion judgment against Chevron, nor Ecuador's continued brazen refusal to follow the order is really much a surprise. The Chevron-Ecuador Death Cage Match continues unabated and has gotten so out of control that almost nothing shocks me about this case anymore.  A former Ecuadorian judge swearing...

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15 Oct

Argentina is, to put it bluntly, one of the world’s greatest sovereign deadbeats, defaulting on its sovereign bonds more than once as well as bearing the distinction of being the world’s number one respondent in ICSID arbitration claims (or at least close to number one).  Last week, the ongoing struggle between foreign creditors and Argentina found a new flashpoint as...

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01 Jun

[Stephen G.A. Pitel is Associate Professor at Western University, Faculty of Law] On May 30, 2012, residents of Ecuador started an action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking to enforce a judgment in their favour of an Ecuadorian court against Chevron.  The amount of the judgment is a staggering $18 billion.  Chevron has announced that it will resist the enforcement litigation in Ontario. Under Ontario’s common law, confirmed relatively recently by the Supreme Court of Canada in Beals v Saldanha, the test for whether a court will enforce a foreign judgment ordering the payment of money has three requirements.  First, the judgment must be final.  Second, the court granting the judgment must have had jurisdiction on a particular basis.  This is sometimes called jurisdiction in the international sense or jurisdictional competence.  Third, the judgment must be for a fixed sum of money and not a tax or penalty.  In general see Stephen G.A. Pitel & Nicholas S. Rafferty, Conflict of Laws at 159-73. On the first requirement, a judgment is considered to be final even though there is time remaining within which to launch an appeal or an appeal has in fact been launched (as is the case here): Nouvion v Freeman (1889), 15 App Cas 1 (HL) at 10-11 and 13.  However, in such a situation it is relatively straightforward for the defendant in the enforcement proceedings to obtain a stay of the action on the basis that the court should await the results of the appeal.  It would seem likely that Chevron could have the Ontario proceedings stayed pending the results of the appeal in Ecuador.  Even if the enforcement proceedings are stayed, starting them can still have advantages to the plaintiff.  The stay does not stop the plaintiff attempting to obtain a Mareva injunction to freeze assets or other forms of interlocutory relief.
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30 May

The shoe has finally dropped. Ever since the Invictus Memo was released to the public we knew that the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs were considering twenty-seven different countries to enforce the $18.2 Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron. With Chevron's far-flung assets, it was plausible that the Plaintiffs would choose to enforce the judgment in countries with close ties to Ecuador and...

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11 May

[Doug Cassel is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School] Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on April 30 directed his Council of State (a policy advisory body) to study Venezuela’s “withdrawal” from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.  He asked for their recommendation within days, not weeks.  This is the latest move in the Bolivarian Republic’s long record of denouncing the Commission and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as tools of US imperialism, supposedly biased against socialist Venezuela. But the real reason for Chavez’ pronouncement, say human rights groups – in my view correctly – is that the Commission and Court hold the Chavista regime accountable for its systematic violations of the independence of the judiciary (1, 2), and of freedom of the press, (3, 4), as well as other serious violations of human rights (5, 6). Chavez’ call was promptly cheered by other high officials in Caracas.  It seems a foregone conclusion that the Council will recommend withdrawal.  Since Chavez has already declared that Venezuela should have withdrawn a long time ago, he is all but certain to heed such a recommendation. Withdrawing from the Commission, however, is not so simple.
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