The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling denying the oil giant Chevron’s bid to block an $18 billion fine for polluting Ecuador’s rain forest since the 1970s. Amazonian residents won the judgment last year after a long-running case seeking damages for Chevron’s dumping of billions of gallons of toxic oil waste. The initial ruling called on Chevron to pay $8.6 billion, but then rose to more than double that amount after Chevron failed to apologize. Chevron was appealing a lower court decision that threw out an injunction the company had won to block enforcement of the fine, but on Tuesday the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal without comment.