The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied to hear an appeal by an American lawyer to try to collect US$8.65 billion in pollution damages from Chevron, handing a victory to the U.S. oil supermajor over a pollution judgment issued in Ecuador, which lower U.S. courts had earlier agreed had been obtained via corruption. In August 2016, a U.S. appeals court blocked the enforcement of a US$9.5-billion judgment against Chevron, upholding a lower court ruling that had found that a pollution judgment against the U.S. oil major in Ecuador was the product of fraud and racketeering, and therefore, unenforceable in the U.S. In March 2014, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the case against Chevron in an Ecuadorean court was the product of fraud and racketeering orchestrated by a New York lawyer, concluding that the judgment should not be enforced. Judge Kaplan said the case had been corrupted by […]