Three Ecadorian villagers are suing not just Copper Mesa Mining Corporation (CMMC), but the stock exchange that helped the company raise money.

The cause of action alleged is that "company directors and the TMX Group [the Toronto Stock Exchange] have not done enough to reduce the risk of harm being faced by farmers and community leaders in Intag who have faced violent threats and attacks for opposition to a large open-pit copper mine in their pristine cloud forests."

The allegations date back to 2006 when the company was called Ascendant Copper:

"In early December 2006, over 50 heavily armed security guards, mostly ex-soldiers, were hired to reach company concessions and set up camp. Local residents had been tipped off and gathered along the narrow dirt road that the company-hired trucks would have to pass. When they arrived, Ramírez and others tried to urge the armed men to turn around. But instead, the security agents sprayed tear gas into their faces from only a metre away and fired their weapons into the air, injuring one man, also a plaintiff in the case.

When the residents didn't back down, the guards finally retreated.

The incident was caught on film by a European student researching the controversy and is retold as part of the recent film Under Rich Earth by director Malcolm Rogge that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It has also been denounced in a complaint to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission."

The original incident can be viewed on the embedded video. The preceding parts of the video can be accessed on the YouTube site, and show the peaceful nature of the villagers' blockade up to the point the security forces opened fire.

What makes the suit particularly interesting is the intention of Murray Klippenstein, the plaintiff's lawyer, to use the case to highlight the difficulty of pinning down corporate accountability across global businesses:

"Copper Mesa whose headquarters in Colorado, "has connections to some nine different legal jurisdictions, making it difficult to identify which jurisdiction is the proper one in which to hold the corporation accountable," says the legal summary of the case.

The former website of Copper Mesa (then Ascendant Copper) acknowledged that its corporate structure makes suing directors difficult: "All of the directors of Ascendant and substantially all of their assets and those of Ascendant are located outside of Canada. It may not be possible for purchasers of securities being qualified for distribution under this prospectus to effect service of process within Canada upon directors who reside outside of Canada..." "

This is why, according to The Tyee news report, the legal action is focusing on decisions taken in Canada at the time of the listing.

The TMX Group that runs the exchange regards the complaint as entirely without merit, according to the report.

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