There comes a time in most big-dollar litigation battles when the combatants consider compromise. Legal compromise has a compelling logic. Litigation takes on a neurotic, swirling momentum that's both expensive and progressively divorced from any underlying merits. Some legal conflagrations defy extinguishment, however, and the Chevron oil pollution case in Ecuador is one such. After more than 20 years of conflict in courts in the US, Ecuador, The Hague, and now Argentina, Brazil, and Canada, the strife shows no sign of easing. The struggle arises from the nasty side effects of industrializing the Amazon rain forest. Four decades after petroleum began to flow from the jungle to ports on the Pacific via a pipeline over the Andes, waste oil remains in open pits near rural hamlets; poor peasants drink from contaminated streams. Reams of claims and counterclaims haven't cleaned up a single spill or built one medical clinic.