I was planning to take the rest of the week off, but I have a breaking story to report in the Lago Agrio case. The Lago Agrio plaintiffs have filed a second lawsuit seeking recognition and enforcement of their judgment, this time in the Superior Court of Justice (the Superior Tribunal de Justiça) in Brasilia. Here is the complaint in Portuguese. I will post an English translation when available. I don’t read Portuguese, but I don’t have to in order order to get the gist of the complaint: the first major heading is: “Chernobyl Da Amazônia.”

One interesting feature of this new case is that both Brazil and Ecuador (but not the United States or Canada) are parties to the Inter-American Convention on the Extraterritorial Validity of Foreign Judgments and Arbitral Awards, sometimes called the Montevideo Convention. We haven’t considered this treaty before at Letters Blogatory, but I’m sure we’ll be providing some analysis in the coming days!

I am working with my contacts in Brazil to try to get some guest commentary on this new development. Stay tuned!