Here’s an interesting quirk of big litigation that may hit a multinational company: A plaintiff can try to enforce a favorable judgment in just about any country in which the defendant has significant assets.
That can create a few headaches for defendants, who might have to chase a plaintiff from Cambodia to Chad to China to keep its assets from being seized.
Chevron Corp. on Tuesday got a tough reminder of this lesson, when an appellate court in Canada ruled that winners of a $9.5 billion judgment against the oil giant in Ecuador could try to recover the assets in the Great White North.
Writes the WSJ’s Dan Gilbert:
The plaintiffs, residents of Ecuador’s jungles, are seeking to enforce a 2011 judgment against Chevron by confiscating its properties in other countries where it operates. In May, a lower court in Ontario held that the Ecuadorean judgment didn’t apply to Chevron subsidiaries like the one that owns its assets in Canada, halting the plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the company there.
The Court of Appeal in Ontario reversed the lower court’s ruling.
At points in its opinion, the panel seemed put out by Chevron’s litigation tactics.
“For 20 years, Chevron has contested the legal proceedings of every court involved in this litigation – in...
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