LEXPERT MAGAZINE
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JULY 2019 17
ART OF THE CASE FEATURES
not involved in the events that gave rise to
the Ecuadorean judgment; and never mind
that Chevron Corporation, a public com-
pany with its head office in California, had
no separate presence or business in Canada.
Instead, what Lenczner discerned was a
corporate "structure" in name only.
"Chevron Corporation and every one of
the intervening subsidiaries had no business
at all other than to hold the shares of the
subsidiary below," he said. "What I saw was
a bigger picture of multinationals in the ex-
traction business who set up these layers of
subsidiaries and benefit from them while at
the same time insulating the parent and the
subsidiaries from each other's liabilities."
e circumstances, Lenczner concluded,
were unique.
"It's one thing to uphold the corporate
veil where a parent has a partial interest in a
subsidiary," he said. "But there is in a sense
no law on how you approach the separate-
ness of a seventh-level subsidiary in the con-
text of the facts in this case."
e equities, the lawyer concluded, were there for his clients.
And, as the Ontario Court of Appeal observed in its conclusive
2018 judgment, he was right.
"is is a tragic case," the court wrote. "ere can be no deny-
ing that, through no fault of their own, the appellants have suf-
fered lasting damages to their lands, their health, and their way
of life. eir frustration in obtaining justice is understandable."
Unfortunately for Lenczner and his clients, what was "un-
derstandable" did not turn out to be determinative.
"Notwithstanding those legitimate concerns, our courts
must decide cases in a manner that is consistent with the com-
mon law as developed in our jurisprudence and the statutes
enacted by our democratically elected legislature," the court
added. "e legal arguments advanced by the [plaintiffs] can-
not succeed."
When Lenczner launched Yaiguaje in Ontario Superior
Court in 2012, the procedural history was already some two
decades old. But its origins went much further back, stemming
from allegations that Texaco Inc., a part of the Chevron con-
glomerate since 2001, polluted rainforests and rivers in Ecua-
dor and Peru between 1964 and 1992, resulting in damage to
the environment and the health of regional residents.
Class actions launched in the US Federal Court in 1993
trolled on for a decade, but went nowhere when the court de-
