…For the past three years…[Chevron and residents of Ecuador’s Amazon basin] have been engaged in a contentious trial in Lago Agrio over Chevron's alleged contamination of the Amazon region. According to the plaintiffs' allegations, Chevron is guilty of…dumping 18.5 billion gallons of oily water into rivers and streams in Ecuador's Amazon region…They say the dumping caused a high incidence of cancer, spontaneous abortions, and birth defects. Chevron says it complied with Ecuadorian law at the time…The plaintiffs…are trying for something beyond the norm: representing a class of individual plaintiffs in an environmental tort case in a country with little history of toxic tort law. In that sense, the case is a pioneering new paradigm… [Also refers to Texaco, Petroecuador]