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 Indigenous lands in the Amazon rainforest, surrendered...
Oct 27, 2021 · October 27, 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 sentence.
Oct 27, 2021 · Lawyer Who Won $9.5 Billion Settlement Against Chevron Reports to Prison. 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 sentence.
Oct 28, 2021 · Steven Donziger, an environmental lawyer who won a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron over oil pollution in Amazon rainforest Indigenous lands, has said his imprisonment will "backfire."
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
(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.Dec 10, 2021
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 means—although executing their imprisonment of Donziger required hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms.Nov 4, 2021
Donziger “has been found guilty of egregious professional misconduct” in connection with the Ecuadorian environmental lawsuit he led as an attorney against Chevron, said the Appellate Division, First Department while disbarring him.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Donziger turned himself in to a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., where he will serve his six-month sentence. He had already spent more than 800 days under home detention after the court cited flight-risk concerns, his lawyer, Ronald L. Kuby, said on Wednesday.Oct 27, 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 famously won a landmark environmental case in 2011 against the Chevron oil corporation for their role in poisoning an area of Ecuadorian indigenous land the size of Rhode Island. Chevron was ordered by an Ecuadorian court to pay $9.5 billion in damages to the area's inhabitants.Oct 25, 2021
Chevron deference, or Chevron doctrine, is an administrative law principle that compels federal courts to defer to a federal agency's interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute that Congress delegated to the agency to administer.
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.
In 1993, he joined a legal team investigating reports of pollution in the Lago Agrio region of northern Ecuador, nestled next to the country’s border with Colombia.
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.