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Breaking: Judge Kaplan Exonerates Chevron’s Bond
On April 2, Judge Kaplan granted Chevron’s motion to exonerate the bond Chevron posted as a condition of obtaining a preliminary injunction against the Lago Agro plaintiffs and their agents—the injunction, later vacated by the Second Circuit, that forbade the plaintiffs to seek to enforce the Ecuadoran judgment anywhere in the world. Before I briefly……
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Case of the Day: Holt v. Kormann Rockster Recycler
The case of the day is Holt v. Kormann Rockster Recycler GmbH (Cal. Ct. App. 2012). Holt sued Kormann, an Austrian company, Rockster North America (“RNA”), a Canadian corporation, and Stephane Guerchon, a resident of Montreal. RNA was the North American distributor of Kormann rock crushers in North America, and Guerchon owned RNA. The claim……
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Lago Agrio: Jarndyce & Jarndyce, or Death-Cage Match?
Julian Ku of Opinio Juris participated in discussions about the Lago Agrio case at the recent ASIL meeting. Read the summary of his presentation (no longer available online) not just for his conclusion about what happened in Ecuador (he concludes that “Chevron seems to have been seriously wronged in the Ecuador proceeding”), but for an……
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Case of the Day: European Community v. RJR Nabisco
I’m going outside the official Letters Blogatory Scope of Coverage to write about European Community v. RJR Nabisco, Inc. (E.D.N.Y. 2011), an interesting reversal of the usual FSIA case. In the usual case, a sovereign defendant asserts immunity from jurisdiction in the US courts. In today’s case, the sovereign—or the supposed sovereign—was the plaintiff. The……
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Lago Agrio Developments
[Updated: A knowledgeable source has told me that in fact the AFP report referenced below was incorrect and that the Ecuadoran Supreme Court has made no decision on the case one way or the other. Stay tuned!] There are two developments to note in Ecuador on the Lago Agrio case. First, the appellate court in……