( CNN ) -- Chevron filed an appeal with Ecuador 's National Court to review a ruling that it must pay billions of dollars in damages for oil pollution in the Amazon rain forest . In addition to the $ 8.6 billion ruling , the court said that Chevron must publicly apologize to Ecuador , and if it fails to do so , the fine will be doubled to nearly $ 18 billion . The ruling Chevron is appealing was handed by an Ecuadorian appeals court on January 4 , nearly a year after the panel received the case , the state-run Andes news agency reported . The case stems from claims that the company had a detrimental impact on Amazonian communities where it operated . Chevron says it has filed the appeal with Ecuador 's National Court of Justice . `` Throughout the course of this litigation , judges corruptly operating in concert with the plaintiffs ' lawyers have created , rather than corrected , injustice , '' Hewitt Pate , Chevron vice president and general counsel , said Friday . Chevron 's appeal is the latest in 19 years of litigation between Amazon residents and Texaco , which was later purchased by Chevron . At the time of the January ruling , Chevron said the appeals court decision `` is another glaring example of the politicization and corruption of Ecuador 's judiciary that has plagued this fraudulent case from the start . '' The company alleges that reports and evidence against it were fraudulent , and that bribes and corruption led to the original decision against it . `` Chevron does not believe that the Ecuador ruling is enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law . The company will continue to seek to hold accountable the perpetrators of this fraud , '' the company said in a statement . When an Ecuadorian court handed down the original ruling last year , both Chevron and the Amazonian residents appealed . Chevron argued the verdict was the product of fraud and the plaintiffs said the size of the award was too small in comparison to what would be needed to do a real clean-up . The case , Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco , was originally filed in New York in 1993 on behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of Ecuador 's Amazon region . The suit was eventually transferred to the Ecuadorian court and Ecuadorian jurisdiction . The lawsuit alleges that Texaco used a variety of substandard production practices in Ecuador that resulted in pollution that decimated several indigenous groups in the area , according to a fact sheet provided by the Amazon Defense Coalition . According to the group , Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways , abandoned more than 900 waste pits , burned millions of cubic meters of gases with no controls and spilled more than 17 million gallons of oil due to pipeline ruptures . Cancer and other health problems were reported at higher rates in the area , the group says . Chevron says Texaco was partnered with an Ecuadorian oil company when it operated in Ecuador , and that it spent $ 40 million on remediation efforts to clean up roughly one-third of the sites in which it worked -- an amount reflective of its 37 % share of the oil-producing consortium with Petroecuador . It says its cleanup efforts were certified and approved by the Ecuardorian government and blames Petroecuador for any ongoing pollution at sites where it was the sole operator , according to documents on the Chevron website regarding the lawsuit and its history of operations in the South American country .
California 's lawsuit ended 19 years of litigation . The fine will double if Chevron does not apologize , an appeals court has ruled . The court says the ruling is fraudulent . It does not say the ruling is enforceable .