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profound differences. These concern both the characterization of the nature and use of the
property (which affects its value for purposes of compensation) and the numbers drawn from
the examination carried out by the various experts who participated. In this regard,
paragraph 63referred judgment is particularly illustrative in regard to this vote.
11. Accordingly, the Court has not been provided with clear, sufficient, or accepted elements
of analysis by the litigants. Moreover, the final determination concerns the responsibility and
mission of the Tribunal, "the expert of experts," and is not overruled by the opinion of the
experts or in the more or less automatic adoption of a sort of "average" between numbers
that are distant one from another, with respect to the basis and its amount.
12. The Court, which has already expressed that it has the "power to verify whether (the)
agreement (which eventually was reached by the State and the representatives of the
victim) is consistent with the American Convention on Human Rights," was finally disagreed
upon, requiring it to provide full reparation and to adopt a decision without the support that
would have existed with the decision of the parties and the agreement (if it were relevant)
of the opinion of experts.
13. As such, the need arose to resolve in equity, pursuant to that mentioned in paragraph 84
of the Judgment of March 3, 2011. However, the consequences of the implementation of
equity to a problem that ideally should have been resolved in another manner, qualitatively
and quantitatively - which could not be reached, as has already stated - divided the opinion
of the judges and now explains the reason for separate considerations and opinions.
14. In my opinion, equity - justice in the case, is threatened by the nature of the case - in
the case sub judice, there is a sharper consideration of the set of standards that explicitly or
implicitly are enshrined in the Articles 21(1), 21(2), 32(2), and 63(1) of the Convention, as
there is - always protecting fairness - the need to move between the wide space that exists
between numbers that are very different and very distant from each other. It is necessary to
find, in this wide space, a number that is reasonable for the scope of the objective sought by
the Court at this time.
15. I must emphasize, to synthesize the reading of this particular opinion, to which I am not
discussing, in any way, the terms of the judgment on the merits, or reviewing or rereading
its terms. This judgment said what it needed to say about the formal legality of the
expropriation, the formal legality of the process, the existence of a cause of action based on
public or social interest, and other extremes of its incumbency. What I seek - to my
knowledge and belief - is to infer from the Convention and the Judgment on the merits the
basis for the identification of a reasonable amount as compensation.
16. The Court has decided, by a majority vote, what that number is. I shall not pose
another, but I shall state that in my opinion the amount specified in the judgment of March 3
could have been more reasonable and thus provide a more equitable solution to the obvious
problem that arises regarding the tension between the right to a person's private property
and the social expectation of the community for whose benefit the expropriation was made.
Both objectives are plausible. It is possible to head to them, especially when it entails
operating with equity in the absence of conclusive evidence of another nature.
17. I think that the Court itself has considered some implications of the decision, which must
be fulfilled by the Ecuadorian State, and perhaps more specifically - in practical terms - by
the community of Quito, which now faces two overriding purposes: to carry out the
ecological project that will benefit the health of the community and to provide the
compensation that is due - with full justification, because it stems from the infringement of
an individual right - that of the victim in this case.
18. I say that the Court has considered in some way - by implication - the circumstances in
which it operates and the consequences that should be brought about by its judgment, in
that it allowed the State to pay the compensation within five years, without accruing new
interest charges due to this modality of payment. I do not believe that it would have been
resolved in this way had the Court not considered the existing tension between the rights
sought to be respected and the difficulty of making a single payment, or covering the
payment in a shorter period or with interest accrued over time, of such a large amount
(given the circumstances presented here), which perhaps would weigh very heavily on the
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