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.
An Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion. But the judgment was later invalidated by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who ruled that it was obtained through fraud, bribery, witness tampering and other misconduct in 2014.
Seward & Kissel has represented many oil and gas companies throughout the years, including Chevron in 2018. Misdemeanor criminal contempt carries a maximum sentence of one year. If the penalty is more than six months for this type of charge, Mr. Kuby said, a defendant would get a trial by jury.
Johnson wants $86 billion in damages, plus trebled damages of $172 billion, for losses incurred from trading dogecoin since 2019. He is seeking to represent a class of people who have lost money investing in dogecoin.
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.
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.
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.
In 2011, an Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron to pay $18.2 billion for "extensively polluting" the Lago Agrio region in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Ecuador's highest court upheld the verdict a year later. However, it reduced the amount of compensation to $9.5 billion. Chevron never complied with the ruling.
Donziger, the New York lawyer who doggedly pursued Chevron for its contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon and helped win a multi-billion-dollar verdict in Ecuador, was found to have participated in racketeering. A federal court found that he was involved in a scheme to bribe an Ecuadorian judge…