Victims of what they say is one the world's worst environmental disasters will on Friday ask a New York court to free up billions of dollars in compensation awarded to them in a record ruling earlier this year – and oust the judge who blocked their claim.
The $8bn fine was imposed by an Ecuadorian court in February on oil giant Chevron, on behalf of 30,000 residents of the Amazon basin whose health and environment were allegedly damaged by chemical-laden waste water dumped by Texaco's operations from 1972 to 1990. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.
Chevron has attacked the judgment as a "fraud." The company has claimed the entire case is an extortion scheme. In March, Chevron secured an injunction from judge Lewis Kaplan against the decision, ahead of a trial set for November.
Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson said the Ecuadorians were guilty of "shocking levels of misconduct." He said: "The fraud that has been uncovered is undeniable."
Humberto Piaguaje, one of the plaintiffs, and a leader of the indigenous Secoya people of Ecuador's northern Amazon rainforest, said: "Chevron is the one that's the criminal here. They came to our lands, they destroyed our lives, our culture and left us in poverty."
He has travelled to New York for the hearing.
The two sides are set to go to court on 15 November, when Chevron will ask a court to reject the ruling from Ecuador. Craig Smyser, the attorney representing the Ecuadorians, said he hoped to have Chevron's case thrown out and to have Kaplan removed from the case if the court decides it should proceed.
"He [Kaplan] has taken a position that indicates bias against my client," said Smyser.
"He has already made up his mind about this case. He has indicated that he thinks this is a game, and that the whole idea of Ecuadorian pollution and contamination is a construct of lawyers'."
Symser said he feared his clients would receive a "show trial" if Kaplan is allowed to hear the case.
Smyser and Chevron's lawyers will appear in court on Friday morning to make their case to the second circuit court of New York. The court's opinion is expected sometime next month.
A spokesman for Kaplan said the judge would not comment on the action.
The legal hearing is the latest twist in the 18-year fight between Chevron and a group of Ecuadorian residents who claim massive pollution has destroyed their lives and their culture in what has been described as the 'Amazon Chernobyl'.
The plaintiffs claim Chevron's operations discharged billions of gallons of toxic waste into Amazon lands, affecting over 1,500 square miles of the Amazon, causing cancer rates to soar, destroying locals' livelihoods and habitats, and killing flora and fauna.
More than 30bn gallons of toxic wastes and crude oil have allegedly been discharged into the land and waterways of Ecuador's Amazon basin, or oriente, according to a report by Sweden's Umeå International School of Public Health.
BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster, by comparison, pumped 205m gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and 10.8m gallons were spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 in Alaska.
Servio Curipoma, another plaintiff in New York for the hearing, said he had lost both his parents to cancer that doctors had linked to the contamination of local drinking water. "Life for myself and all of us in Ecuadorian Amazon has been very hard," he said.
"All of us who live there live in the midst of the crude oil that Chevron left. Chevron hasn't done anything to deal with the oil."