NEW YORK – Chevron Corp. said it won't seek monetary damages against two plaintiffs in a racketeering suit the company filed claiming they committed fraud to win a $19 billion verdict in a pollution case in Ecuador.

The company Monday also asked that the trial, set to begin in federal court in Manhattan next month, be held in two parts, one before a federal jury and a second phase before a judge.

Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, was ordered to pay as much as $19 billion in compensatory and punitive damages for Texaco's alleged dumping of toxic drilling wastes in the Ecuadorean jungle from 1964 to about 1992.

The ruling came in an 18-year-old lawsuit decided by a judge in Lago Agrio, a provincial capital near the Colombian border.

The company filed a racketeering suit in federal court in New York in 2011 accusing the Ecuadoreans and their lead legal adviser, Steven Donziger, of improperly influencing a court expert in the case in Lago Agrio and committing fraud to win the judgment.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York, who is presiding over the case, has scheduled an Oct. 15 trial.

The San Ramon, Calif.-based oil company said it won't seek money damages against two Ecuadoreans and that a jury should determine claims of liability against all of the defendants as well as Donziger and his law firm.

Chevron also asked that a jury determine what, if any, compensatory and punitive monetary damages should be paid by Donziger and asked Kaplan to determine what remedies should be imposed.

Chevron denies wrongdoing in the Lago Agrio lawsuit.