[A]n international arbitration panel issued a ruling suggesting that a $19 billion judgment against Chevron won in 2011 in Ecuador by the Amazon Defense Front was based on claims that had already been definitively settled and extinguished in 1995 -- eight years before the Ecuador case was filed. "It pulls the legal rug out from under the [Front's] whole fraudulent litigation scheme," says…R. Hewitt Pate, Chevron's general counsel…The panel ruling came in an arbitration brought by Chevron against the Republic of Ecuador under a 1993 investment treaty…Bill Hamilton…, a spokesman for the Amazon Defense Front, notes in an email that the Front itself was not a party to the arbitration (though it submitted amicus briefs) and adds: "The Ecuadorian government has long since denounced these hearings. It is a forum for and by Chevron that has no significance." [Also refers to Petroecuador, Texaco (part of Chevron)]