Chevron has never paid up, claiming âshocking levels of misconductâ and fraud by Donziger and the Ecuadorian judiciary. But the subsequent web of events that has led to Donziger being detained and stripped of his law license is befuddling even to legal scholars.
Chevron has âcapturedâ the judge, Donziger said, and now the oil company seems omnipresent in his fate.
Chevron became the defendant when it acquired Texaco in 2001. Chevron contended that Donziger fabricated facts and argued that Ecuador's state-run oil company, Petroecuador, was primarily responsible for the damage and that it was released from liability after a $40 million cleanup.
The case stems from Steveâs role in suing Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people for dumping 16 billion gallons of oil into their ancestral land in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Ten years ago, Ecuadorâs Supreme Court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion.
In 2011, Chevron filed a civil RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) suit against Donziger in New York City, accusing him of bribing an Ecuadorean judge, ghostwriting the damages judgment against it, and "fixing" scientific studies.
On July 26, 2021, Donziger was found guilty on all six contempt charges, and Preska sentenced him to the maximum of six months in prison. Chevron's win against Donziger was not just acquired through shady legal meansâalthough executing their imprisonment of Donziger required hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms.
(Reuters) - Attorneys for environmental lawyer Steven Donziger said Thursday that he is serving the remainder of a six-month sentence for contempt of court at home under a pandemic-era early release program.
The payments were made to a team of three New York City lawyers, whom a Manhattan federal judge appointed as special prosecutors to pursue criminal contempt charges against Donziger after the Department of Justice declined a court referral to prosecute him, citing lack of resources.
Donziger was found responsible for forging evidence and engaging in corrupt practices to win a lawsuit against the well-known oil company Chevron. Evidence showed that the lawyer engaged in bribery to get the Ecuadorian courts to render a verdict in his favor.
Judge KaplanSpecial offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. After the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute the case, Judge Kaplan took the rare step of appointing a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute Mr. Donziger in the name of the U.S. government, Mr. Kuby said.
In 1993, Steven Donziger, a recent Harvard law school graduate and human rights attorney, began working on an environmental case on behalf of Ecuadorians allegedly affected by Texaco's drilling. The case eventually became a 30,000-person class action lawsuit against Texaco in New York federal court.
In one of the stranger episodes in this saga, Chevron relocated Alberto Guerra, an Ecuadorian judge, and his family to the US, paid for his health insurance and a car while meeting with him more than 50 times before he provided testimony that Donziger discussed the bribe with him at a Quito restaurant.
Steven Donziger has been detained at home since August 2019, the result of a Kafkaesque legal battle stemming from his crusade on behalf of Indigenous Amazonians.
The oil company Texaco had carved out drilling outposts in this tract of the Amazon since the 1960s, leaving what Donziger calls âgrotesqueâ Olympic swimming pool-sized waste pits of oil. Pollution flowed freely into rivers and streams used by the Indigenous population for drinking water.
Kaplanâs conduct, Donziger said, has been an âabomination, unethical and abusive. I never thought this could happen in the US.â. Other lawyers have voiced more measured concerns over Kaplan. Chevron has âcapturedâ the judge, Donziger said, and now the oil company seems omnipresent in his fate.
Chevron is not involved in that case.â. In Donzigerâs eyes, the only real corruption has occurred in the US system, not Ecuadorâs, a symptom of what he views as a âcolonialâ mindset that has airily dismissed judgements made outside the US and obscured the ultimate protagonists of this saga, the people of Lago Agrio.
Chevron has never paid up, claiming âshocking levels of misconductâ and fraud by Donziger and the Ecuadorian judiciary. But the subsequent web of events that has led to Donziger being detained and stripped of his law license is befuddling even to legal scholars.
Donziger has spent over two decades trying to hold Chevron accountable for pollution of the Ecuadorian rainforest. In 2000, Chevron acquired Texaco, which had contaminated the water and soil in Ecuadorâs Lago Agrio region between 1964 and 1992. Lago Agrio is the ancestral homeland of more 30,000 people.
On May 4, 2021, 68 Nobel laureates wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland that they thought the facts of the case clearly demonstrate âa violation of Mr. Donzigerâs rights and those of the affected communities in Ecuador when a U.S.
In September 2020, 37 organizations collectively representing 500,000 lawyers worldwide, including this writer, filed a judicial complaint against Kaplan for unethically targeting Donziger for the benefit of Chevron.