Case against Oxy hits home

Since 2007, members of the Achuar tribe, indigenous to Peru’s Amazon rain forest, have been fighting to have their class-action suit against Occidental Petroleum tried in the United States. The Achuar allege that over a 30-year period, the Westwood-based oil company dumped millions of gallons of wastewater into their rivers and disposed of waste in unlined pits, sickening people and contaminating the land. The company, they maintain, should be held accountable in California courts. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, overturning a lower court ruling that said Maynas Carijano vs. Occidental Petroleum should be tried in Peru.

The decision was hailed by indigenous communities around the globe that are battling multinational corporations over the destruction of natural habitat and their way of life, a long-running fight that has increasingly sought to focus public attention on corporate accountability. Environmentalists and indigenous groups have filed suit in U.S. courts, purchased or received gifts of stock in the companies they are suing in order to speak at shareholder meetings and arranged “toxic tours” for English-speaking journalists.

Occidental, which strongly denies culpability, says Peru’s national oil company is responsible for whatever remediation or compensation is necessary. It has fought to have the trial in South America, arguing that Peru, where the contamination occurred, was a more convenient location than downtown Los Angeles. But the heart of the case is not about the Amazon; it is about Occidental’s corporate culture. The appeals court concluded: “Most of the plaintiffs’ claims turn not on the physical location of the injury but on the mental state of the Occidental managers who actually made the business decisions that allegedly resulted in the injury.”

The court noted other arguments in favor of holding the trial in California: A statute of limitations in Peru would probably have resulted in dismissal of the case, so sending it there would have offered no genuine legal recourse for the plaintiffs; nor would they have been justly compensated had they prevailed. That Amazon Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group that is a co-plaintiff in the case, has roots in California was further justification for a local venue.

Typically such cases are litigated in distant locales, far from North American media and scrutiny. But the court is right: The state has a strong interest in providing a forum for those “harmed by the actions of its corporate citizens.” Now we will see for ourselves how Occidental comported itself, not in the Amazon but in its own natural habitat.