Aquinda v. Texaco, Inc., 93 Civ. 7527 (JSR).
| Decision Date | 12 November 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 93 Civ. 7527 (JSR).,93 Civ. 7527 (JSR). |
| Citation | 945 F.Supp. 625 |
| Parties | Maria AQUINDA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. TEXACO, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Joseph Kohn, Kohn Nast & Graf, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiffs.
Griffin B. Bell, George S. Branch & Dan H. Willoughby, King & Spalding, New York City, for Defendant.
Residents of the Oriente region of Ecuador have twice brought class actions against Texaco in the courts of the United States, seeking extensive relief for vast devastation to that region caused by the decades of oil exploration and extraction activities of a consortium over which both Texaco and Ecuador's state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, have at various times exercised substantial control.1 The first such action, filed in Harris County, Texas in late August, 1993 and promptly removed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, was dismissed fewer than five months later on grounds of international comity and forum non conveniens. Sequihua v. Texaco, Inc., 847 F.Supp. 61 (S.D.Tex.1994). By contrast, when the instant action was filed in the Southern District of New York in early November, 1993, the late Judge Broderick accorded plaintiffs unusual leeway, through discovery and otherwise, to try to prove that this seemingly Ecuadoran-centered lawsuit properly belonged here. Following Judge Broderick's death, the discovery was completed under the supervision of Judge Parker and Magistrate Judge Smith, and the case was then reassigned in 1996 to this Court, to which the parties presented still further written submissions as well as several hours of oral argument.
In hindsight, such solicitude may have been improvident, for the overwhelming obstacles to the Court's jurisdiction that were already apparent to the court in Sequihua have become increasingly obvious to this Court as well. Indeed, after a full review of the underlying record, the Court finds itself obliged to dismiss this action on the same grounds of international comity and forum non conveniens so well stated in Sequihua, to which this Court can add little. While it is true that, in contrast to the situation in Sequihua, defendant Texaco is headquartered in this judicial district and the Complaint alleges that decisions made by its executives in New York were important to the allegedly unlawful activities undertaken by the consortium in Ecuador, these differences are, in the Court's view, insufficient to overcome the balance of other factors that weigh so heavily against retaining jurisdiction, as outlined in Sequihua. As for the submissions offered here by the Congress of Ecuador asking this Court to disregard the submissions of the Government of Ecuador objecting to this Court's retention of jurisdiction, the litany of conflicting submissions from these representatives and officials further evidences the need for this Court to resist intruding on matters that are already the subject of intense political debate in the affected foreign country.
Beyond the grounds specified in Sequihua, this Court further concludes that there is another independently-sufficient reason why this action must be dismissed: plaintiffs' failure to join indispensable parties, namely, Petroecuador and the Republic of Ecuador. The extensive equitable relief sought by the plaintiffs — ranging from total environmental "clean-up" of the affected lands in Ecuador to a major alteration of the consortium's Trans-Ecuador pipeline to the direct monitoring of the affected lands for years to come — cannot possibly be undertaken in the absence of Petroecuador, which has owned 100% of the consortium since 1992 and 100% of the pipeline since 1986, or the Republic of Ecuador, which has helped supervise the consortium's activities from the outset and which owns much, if not all, of the affected lands. Petroecuador and the Republic of Ecuador thus are necessary "persons to be joined if feasible" under either and both prongs of Fed.R.Civ.P. 19(a).2 See Lykins v. Westinghouse Electric, 710 F.Supp. 1122, 1125 (E.D.Ky.1988); Conservation Council of Western Australia, Inc. v. Aluminum Co. Of America, 518 F.Supp. 270, 277 (W.D.Pa.1981).
Yet while the Republic of Ecuador and Petroecuador are subject to service of process, neither can feasibly be joined in this action because, under the provisions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1603(b) and 1604, neither is subject to suit in the United States. When a necessary party...
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