Oct 28, 2021 · Oct. 27, 2021. Steven Donziger, the environmental and human rights lawyer who won a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron over oil dumped in …
Oct 01, 2021 · An environmental lawyer who waged a years-long campaign against Chevron over pollution in Ecuador has been sentenced to six months in jail for violating a federal judge’s orders ABC News Video
Jul 26, 2021 · Donziger, a Harvard Law School graduate, won a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorian court in 2011.
Oct 01, 2021 · Donziger, a Harvard Law School graduate, won a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorian court in 2011. San Ramon, California-based Chevron sued him in Manhattan federal court later ...
In 2014, U.S federal judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron "was the product of fraud." Guerra—who received cash and benefits from Chevron totaling $2 million, according to Donziger—later admitted he lied about the bribery, but the case continued.Aug 31, 2021
Donziger, who was disbarred in New York last year, was found guilty of criminal contempt in July including for failing to turn over his computer and other electronic devices in connection with his long-running legal battle with Chevron Corp over oil pollution in Ecuador.Dec 10, 2021
Donziger and other attorneys filed suit against Texaco in 1993 on behalf of more than 30,000 indigenous people and farmers in the Amazon. The case was filed in New York since the company was based in the U.S., but Texaco wanted to move the case to Ecuador where the legal system doesn't involve juries.Nov 4, 2021
Donziger was sentenced to six months in federal prison for the misdemeanor charge of criminal contempt of court on Oct. 1 by New York Federal Judge Loretta Preska. His legal team filed an appeal for the conviction, but in spite of this, Preska ordered that Donziger report directly to prison.Oct 25, 2021
A judge refused to grant him bail, deeming him “a flight risk” with “connections in Ecuador.” Here, briefly, is some background: In 2013, Donziger and his allies won a victory in Ecuadorian courts that required Chevron to clean up 1,700 square miles of polluted rainforest, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.Jan 27, 2022
Donziger was found guilty in July of six counts of criminal contempt of court for withholding evidence in a long, complex legal fight with Chevron, which claims that Mr. Donziger fabricated evidence in the 1990s to win a lawsuit he filed against the oil giant on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people in Ecuador.Oct 27, 2021
Randy is a prominent trial lawyer who handles complex civil cases, securities litigation and white collar criminal matters. He has tried dozens of cases in private practice and as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and has argued more than 100 appeals in federal and state appellate courts.
Chevron has never operated in Ecuador. Texaco Petroleum (TexPet), which became a subsidiary of Chevron in 2001, was a minority partner in an oil-production consortium in Ecuador along with the state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, from 1964 to 1992.
Few news outlets covered the detention of Steven Donziger, who won a multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador against Chevron over the massive contamination in the Lago Agrio region and has been fighting on behalf of Indigenous people and farmers there for more than 25 years.
The Chevron case may be most devastating for the plaintiffs in the Amazon, who never received their judgment despite being left with hundreds of unlined waste pits and contaminated water and soil from millions of gallons of spilled crude oil and billions of gallons of dumped toxic waste.
The twisted legal saga began in 1993, when Donziger and other attorneys filed a class-action suit in New York against Texaco on behalf of more than 30,000 farmers and Indigenous people in the Amazon over massive contamination from the company’s oil drilling there.
In another legal peculiarity, in July, Kaplan appointed a private law firm to prosecute Donziger, after the Southern District of New York declined to do so — a move that is virtually unprecedented. And, as Donziger’s lawyer has pointed out, the firm Kaplan chose, Seward & Kissel, likely has ties to Chevron.
The company sued him in New York, and now he’s under house arrest. Steven Donziger sits for a portrait at his home in Manhattan, N.Y., where he is on house arrest. Photo: Annie Tritt for The Intercept.