· Oct. 27, 2021. Steven Donziger, the environmental and human rights lawyer who won a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron over oil dumped in …
· Lawyer who won $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron reports to prison October 28, 2021 Steven Donziger, the environmental and human rights lawyer who won a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron over oil dumped in Indigenous lands in the Amazon rainforest, surrendered himself to the federal authorities on Wednesday to begin a six-month prison …
· In 2011, Donziger won an $18 billion settlement against Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people in Ecuador for dumping 16 …
· Lawyer Who Won $9.5 Billion Settlement Against Chevron Reports to Prison October 28, 2021 “We will get through this,” he added. Representatives for Chevron did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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.
A well in Amazonian Peru. Donziger was first touched by his case with Chevron in 1993. Photograph: Rodrigo Buendía/AFP/Getty Images
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 “grotesque” Olympic swimming pool-sized waste pits of oil. Pollution flowed freely into rivers and streams used by the Indigenous population for drinking water.
Kaplan’s conduct, Donziger said, has been an “abomination, unethical and abusive. I never thought this could happen in the US.”. Other lawyers have voiced more measured concerns over Kaplan. Chevron has “captured” the judge, Donziger said, and now the oil company seems omnipresent in his fate.
Chevron has never paid up, claiming “shocking levels of misconduct” 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 is not involved in that case.”. In Donziger’s eyes, the only real corruption has occurred in the US system, not Ecuador’s, a symptom of what he views as a “colonial” mindset that has airily dismissed judgements made outside the US and obscured the ultimate protagonists of this saga, the people of Lago Agrio.
Donziger sued Texaco in 1993 on behalf of Indigenous people from Ecuador's Amazon region over pollution and health impacts from oil production. Chevron became the defendant when it acquired Texaco in 2001.
Steven Donziger arrives for a court appearance at Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Manhattan on May 10, 2021 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Donziger was disbarred last year after being found guilty in July of criminal contempt of court for withholding the evidence in the legal fight with Chevron, which claims that he fabricated evidence in the 1990s to win a lawsuit he filed against the energy giant on behalf of Indigenous people in Ecuador.
Donziger was sentenced to six months in prison earlier this month after being found guilty of criminal contempt of court in July for withholding evidence in his long-running battle with the energy giant. He was disbarred over the conviction.