‘EarthRights Files Appeal on Behalf of Maxima Acuña Atalaya & Family Against Newmont Mining Corporation’ – 16 June 2020

…EarthRights International filed an appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Maxima Acuña Atalaya and her family’s case against U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corporation. Subsistence farmers from the rural highlands of Cajamarca, Peru, Maxima and her family sued Newmont in the United States for abuse at the hands of the company’s security forces. The appeal is intended to reverse a decision made in March by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware that the case should be heard in Peru rather than in the United States… “By trying to have this case moved to the Peruvian court system, Newmont is blatantly attempting to avoid accountability in the United States for its abuse of Maxima and her family,” said Wyatt Gjullin, Staff Attorney for EarthRights. “But the court erred in its decision to try the case in Peru because it did not require the defendants to meet their burden to prove that Peru is an adequate forum for the case. Newmont is a U.S.-based company and should be held accountable for its actions in the U.S. court system”…For the past eight years, the defendants have intimidated and physically attacked the Chaupes, killing their animals and destroying their property, all to force them from their farm and to pave the way for a massive open-pit gold mine. The family sued the mining company in its home forum of Delaware. Asserting that it would inconvenience them to litigate at home, defendants sought dismissal of the case, arguing that it should instead be brought in Peru, notwithstanding Peru’s notoriously corrupt court system… Since the district court’s initial decision to dismiss the case, the breadth of the Peruvian court systems’ corruption has become more evident…