Security For Appeal Costs: Litigation Tactics Through The Holistic Lens

In Yaiguaje v. Chevron Corporation, 2017 ONCA 827, a panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal recently reversed, in short order, a decision of one of its members ordering the appellants to pay security for costs.¹  In this protracted international case, the motion judge had ordered the appellants to post $943,000 for security for costs of their appeal of a summary judgment order dismissing their representative claim against Chevron Corporation's Canadian subsidiary.

The appellants are residents of Ecuador and seek to enforce an Ecuadorian judgment obtained in 2011 for US$9.5 billion against Chevron Corporation for environmental damage.  In the Ontario action, they joined Chevron Canada, a seventh level, indirect subsidiary of Chevron Corporation.  In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the Ontario courts' jurisdiction to hear the case: Chevron Corporation v. Yaiguaje, 2015 SCC 42.  The Chevron defendants then filed defences asserting that the Ecuadorian judgment