MANHATTAN (CN) - Already stretching more than two decades and three continents, the multibillion dollar litigation against Chevron for oil devastation to the Amazon may unexpectedly return to the place where it all began.
"We can order you to go to retrial in the Southern District [of New York]," Judge Richard Wesley told an uncomfortable Chevron attorney in the ceremonial courthouse on Monday.
Responding to the blockbuster remark, Chevron's lawyer Ted Olson, from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said he "could not consent" to the idea. Two attorneys representing the company's opponents - Deepak Gupta of the firm Gupta Beck and New York University professor Burt Neuborne - told the judge that they are open to it.
It was New York, more than two decades ago, where Ecuadorean rainforest villagers first sued Chevron's predecessor Texaco for what they describe as an environmental catastrophe.
Roughly eight years into the case, Chevron had it brought to the Ecuadorean rainforest city of Lago Agrio, named after Texaco's former headquarters in Sour Lake, Texas.
Though the transfer relied on Chevron agreeing in New York courts to submit to the jurisdiction of Ecuador's judiciary, the oil giant had a different tune as it awaited the ultimately "adverse" verdict.
Insisting the Ecuadorean litigation was nothing more than a "shakedown," Chevron returned to New York to sue the Ecuadoreans, their attorney Steven Donziger and his colleagues under a statute usually used against mob bosses.
Although it filed civil allegations, Chevron has repeatedly alleged criminal wrongdoing that Donziger denies as the spin of elaborate corporate retaliation scheme produced by testimony "paid for" by the oil giant.
At the Monday hearing, Chevron attorney Olson listed off some of Donziger's alleged "crimes," including bribery, perjury and obstruction of justice.
In 2013, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan credited these charges in finding that the $9.8 billion verdict was "procured by corrupt means."
Wesley, who made Monday's déjà vu proposal of retrying the pollution case in New York, appeared deeply skeptical that Kaplan had the authority to issue his ruling.
In an earlier version of Chevron's case, Wesley sat on the panel that voided an injunction preventing the collection of the Ecuadorean judgment anywhere on the globe. He and his colleagues agreed three years ago that Kaplan had no authority to issue such a "radical" decree.
When Donziger's attorney Gupta praised that decision, Wesley made a quip that provoked laughter in the court: "I did my best."
That decision ultimately caused Kaplan to limit the reach of his ruling to the parties that Chevron sued.
This did not seem to mollify Wesley's concerns Monday.
Referring to his legal research with his law clerks, Wesley told Chevron's lawyer, "We cannot find any case where there's been a collateral attack on a foreign judgment."
Wesley is not the only appellate judge on the panel who heard a prior appeal of this case.
Two years ago, Judge Barrington Parker rejected a motion to unseat Kaplan as too biased for Chevron to handle the case. He also sat on the appellate court that upheld Chevron's subpoena against documentary filmmaker Joseph Berlinger for footage of his documentary "Crude" that hit the cutting room floor.
Signaling a possible split among the panel, Parker made multiple comments Monday indicating he was convinced by Kaplan's findings in his ruling.