-i- TO THE SUBROGATE PRESIDENT OF THE ... - Chevron

admitted into the proceeding it may also benefit the opposing party. 352 In other words,
once production of evidence is ordered by the Court, it becomes part of the proceeding
and is no longer at the free disposal of the party that requested the production of
evidence, but rather comes to belong to all of the litigants. The requested evidence also
aids the judge as he seeks to enter a well-founded and reasoned decision, as required
by Article 76 of the Constitution. As conceded by Dr. Wray, counsel of record for the
plaintiffs, “[e]vidence is indivisible . . . trying to divide it . . . would mean directly violating
the right to due process established in the Constitution and Article 8 of the American
Convention on Human Rights, which protects judicial guarantees.” 353 “I must remind
you, your Honor, that evidence is indivisible, such that inspections are not exclusively
the defendant’s proceedings, but rather are case proceedings in which both parties
have the same rights.” 354
Furthermore, even if the plaintiffs could relinquish their own duty to present
evidence requested and ordered by the Court, a notion the defense does not accept,
they certainly had no right to relinquish the settling experts’ duty to resolve the divergent
conclusions reached by the party-nominated experts in their expert reports regarding
the inspections already completed. Both parties agreed that the independent settling
experts would resolve conflicting conclusions, and both parties had the right to insist on
having that process carried out according to a definitive court order. Pursuant to Article
250 of the Code of Civil Procedure, “[a]n expert or experts will be appointed for issues in
dispute that require knowledge of a certain science, art or trade.” This provision reflects
that there are certain judicial disputes that relate to technical and scientific matters that
are not within the jurisdictional authority of the judge hearing the case and therefore,
they require an expert report to assist the judge in resolving the controverted technical
and scientific allegations at issue. Given the divergent results from the expert reports
from the judicial-inspection process, it was necessary under Article 259 of the Code of
Civil Procedure to appoint settling experts to render a conclusion. As none of the
judges who previously heard this lawsuit did so, the divergent expert reports cannot be
given any evidentiary value. In particular, the reports submitted by the plaintiffs’
nominated experts cannot be given any weight because many of them are affected by
my client's allegations of essential error and fraud, and these allegations have not been
resolved in a timely manner as ordered by law, and because the only settling experts
appointed in this case found that the reports of the plaintiffs’ nominated experts
regarding the judicial inspection of Sacha-53 were false.
352 DEVIS ECHANDIA, Hernando, General Theory of Court Evidence, 5th ed., vol. I, Editorial
ABC, Bogotá, Columbia, p. 118.
353 Plaintiffs’ Motion, filed Oct. 5, 2005 at 11:50a.m., Record at 80940-41, 80940v.
354 Plaintiffs’ Objections to Suspension of Judicial Inspection at Guanta Productions Station, filed
Oct. 19, 2005 at 9:50 a.m., Record at 81535, 81535; see also Plaintiffs’ Motion in Response to Chevron’s
Objections, filed Oct. 5, 2005 at 11:50 a.m., Record at 80940-41, 80940.
CERT. INTERMARK VER: JD
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