Yanza Amazon Def Coalition

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/pablo-fajardo-mendoza-luis-yanza/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/pablo-fajardo-mendoza-luis-yanza/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In&nbsp;<span style="font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">&nbsp;the Ecuadorian Amazon, Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza led one of the largest environmental legal battles in history against oil giant Chevron, demanding justice for the massive petroleum in the region</span></b><span style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></font></div><div style=""><span style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">
</font></span></div><div class="opening-remarks" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Ecuadorian Amazon contains 5% of all the world’s plant and animal species and is one of the most&nbsp;<span data-scaytid="21" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">biodiverse</span>&nbsp;places in the Amazon and on Earth. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As the region’s primary oil investor in the&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="22" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">1970s</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="23" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">1980s</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Texaco built much of Ecuador’s oil infrastructure but chose not to re-inject back into the ground the wastewater and sludge brought up by the drilling process, called formation waters. Instead, according to the plaintiffs, billions of gallons were dumped into the region’s waterways, or left in more than 1,000 unlined, open pits scattered throughout the area. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By the company’s own estimates, it spilled nearly 17 million gallons of oil into soils and waterways, and another 20 billion gallons of formation waters. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled just over 10 million gallons of oil. In 1992, Texaco left Ecuador, leaving behind what experts and inhabitants call a monumental environmental disaster.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b>To this day, the region’s 30,000 inhabitants primarily drink water that has been deemed contaminated by experts involved in the case.</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> According to the plaintiffs, many of the waste pits continue to pollute the rivers, streams and groundwater. In some areas, all water sources are contaminated and few fish survive in the rivers. The plaintiffs claim that prolonged exposure to toxic substances has led to a serious health crisis, and caused people living in such proximity to pollution to suffer dramatically increased incidences of skin disease, respiratory ailments, reproductive disorders and a cancer rate seven times higher than the rest of the country’s population. They also claim that the regional devastation includes more than two million acres of deforestation. Chevron, however, claims that the region’s environmental and health problems are not a result of the pollution left behind by Texaco, and that they are no longer responsible.</span></font></p></div><div class="entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow: hidden;"><div class="at-above-post addthis_tool" data-url="https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/pablo-fajardo-mendoza-luis-yanza/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b>In 1993,&nbsp;<span data-scaytid="27" data-scayt_word="Yanza" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza</span>, working with a team of US-based lawyers, filed a class-action lawsuit against Texaco</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">. Plaintiffs included a coalition of residents brought together by&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="43" data-scayt_word="Yanza's" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza’s</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;organization, including 80 villages and five different indigenous peoples. The initial case against Texaco (acquired by Chevron in 2001) was filed in 1993 in a New York district court, near Texaco’s headquarters. In 1996, a superior court judge dismissed the case, but the plaintiffs filed an appeal and won a reversal of the decision. In 2002, the US Court of Appeals agreed with Chevron’s request to send the case to Ecuador. However, the court warned Chevron that US courts would intervene if the company tried to avoid a judgment imposed by the Ecuadorian courts.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In May 2003, the 30,000 plaintiffs, led by&nbsp;<span data-scaytid="59" data-scayt_word="Fajardo's" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo’s</span>&nbsp;legal team, filed a lawsuit in Ecuador’s northern Amazon, demanding that Chevron pay for a complete cleanup, including removal of all formation waters, debris, and equipment; remediation of all contaminated water bodies and lands; recuperation of fauna, flora, and aqueous life; and monitoring and improvement of the health of the inhabitants.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b>Chevron does not deny dumping formation waters or oil in the region, but says the resulting contamination has not harmed the inhabitants and it is not responsible for any cleanup. </b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">In March 2007, the plaintiffs, with the abundant evidence collected from 45 field inspections, had already proven the existence of extensive contamination, and that further delay was not necessary. The judge issued an order to begin an assessment of the damages, which was carried out by an independent expert, culminating in a report released in April 2008 citing $8.3 – $16 billion in damages.&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="60" data-scayt_word="Fajardo" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="61" data-scayt_word="Yanza" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;toured the country relentlessly, making the trial an issue of national dignity and sovereignty.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="font-weight: inherit;">The impact of&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="62" data-scayt_word="Yanza" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="64" data-scayt_word="Fajardo's" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo’s</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;efforts on Ecuador’s oil industry has been far-reaching. They have publicized the long-term effects on the environment and people, leading the government of Ecuador to pass stronger environmental protection laws. Texaco and Chevron’s legacy in Ecuador is now part of the national collective consciousness.&nbsp;</span><b><span data-scaytid="65" data-scayt_word="Fajardo" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span data-scaytid="63" data-scayt_word="Yanza" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza</span>&nbsp;also hosted the president of Ecuador on a tour of Texaco’s former operations, leading to a pledge by the government to relocate several contaminated communities.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Their work entails significant risk, as well.&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="66" data-scayt_word="Yanza" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">,&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="68" data-scayt_word="Fajardo" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">, their families, and a number of their colleagues have been targets of death threats, harassment, and intimidation. In December 2005, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States issued precautionary measures for&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="67" data-scayt_word="Yanza" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yanza</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><span data-scaytid="69" data-scayt_word="Fajardo" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;in an effort to protect their lives.&nbsp;</span><b><span data-scaytid="71" data-scayt_word="Fajardo's" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo’s</span>&nbsp;brother was killed just months after he joined the legal team; no investigation took place and no one was arrested for the homicide.&nbsp;<span data-scaytid="70" data-scayt_word="Fajardo" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Fajardo</span>&nbsp;has been forced to vary his daily routine, often sleeping in a different place each night.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b>In 2012, Yanza and Fajardo celebrated a major victory with an appeals court ordering Chevron to pay $18 billion in damages to 30,000 indigenous plaintiffs as a result of their historic class action lawsuit. Chevron refused to pay and is fighting the decision in court.</b></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/steven-donziger-chevron/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/steven-donziger-chevron/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">More than a quarter-century ago, Steven Donziger, a young American human rights lawyer, joined the legal effort to force Texaco to clean up the Ecuadoran headwaters of the Amazon rain forest. Between 1972 and 1992, the company dumped toxic waste and spilled billions of gallons of oil-exposed water across 1,700 square miles, an area larger than Rhode Island. In response, a coalition of rural Ecuadorans in the Lago Agrio region sued the US oil giant, and Donziger signed on to help and soon became the lead attorney on the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In 2013, after a legal campaign that stretched across two continents, the 30,000 indigenous people and small farmers whom Donziger represented in a class-action lawsuit won a $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuadoran courts against Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001. I</b>t was one of the largest financial judgments ever against an oil company. It looked like a historic warning to polluters across the Global South. Paul Paz y Miño, the associate director of the environmental group&nbsp;<b>Amazon Watch, described it as “the most important corporate accountability case in history.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Fast-forward to today, and Don­ziger is under house arrest in New York City, forced to wear an ankle monitor. The lawyer, now 59, is fighting contempt charges.</span><b>&nbsp;Meanwhile, his clients in Ecuador have received nothing from Chevron. Without that funding, they have no way to cleanse the poisoned soil or treat what they say is an elevated number of cancer cases</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The mainstream press has largely ignored the legal attacks against Donziger, but Chevron’s counter­offensive could endanger human rights and environmental work around the world. Donziger’s fate, Paz y Miño said, will set a precedent: “Whether it’s Chevron or BP or Shell or any other oil company, if you cannot hold them to account and the lawyer advocating for that case is personally attacked, who else is going to fight those kinds of cases?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Chevron’s legal onslaught succeeded largely because of a single federal judge in New York named Lewis A. Kap­lan.</b>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In 2014, Kaplan found Donziger and his Ecuadoran allies guilty of bribery and fraud, which makes it extremely difficult for the plaintiffs to collect their damages in the United States. Then Kaplan asked federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to bring criminal contempt charges against Donziger for refusing to turn over his electronic devices, which contain communications with his clients.<b>&nbsp;When the prosecutors declined, Kaplan appointed private attorneys to prosecute Donziger—a nearly unprecedented step by a federal judge.</b></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge Lewis Kaplan took the nearly unprecedented step of appointing private attorneys to prosecute Donziger. (Courtesy of Richard Baker / University of Rochester)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Kaplan’s hostility toward Donziger has been on ample display in his 21st-floor wood-paneled courtroom in downtown New York for nearly a decade. At times, he has said the pollution case in Ecuador was “not a bona fide litigation” and dismissed the Lago Agrio residents as “so-called plaintiffs.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Martin Garbus, the legendary human rights lawyer who is part of Donziger’s legal team, is 86 years old and has appeared at hundreds of trials, including in the Deep South during the segregation era. He told me that Kaplan’s treatment of Donziger is the worst he has ever witnessed.</span>&nbsp;“<b>In the courtroom, Kaplan displayed a rage, a fury, that he channeled against Steve,” Garbus said. “He tried to humiliate him. You wouldn’t have to be an expert on the law to recognize it. It was brutal. I’ve never seen a guy eviscerated the way Kaplan tried to eviscerate Steve.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For his part, Donziger said he hopes the Ecuadorans and their lawyers will hold Chevron accountable. He is a tall man—6 feet, 4 inches—and has been pacing restlessly around his Upper West Side apartment, reading law briefs or talking with his contacts in Ecuador by phone. These days, the coronavirus has driven almost everyone into their homes, but Donziger has already spent months “detained in a small apartment not because we did anything wrong,” he said, “but because we were successful and did a lot of things right. Facing the loss of one’s liberty not because one committed a crime but because of something dark and unaccountable in the system is terrifying. It calls into question most everything I believe about our country and my role in it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In an open letter to his supporters last August, Don­ziger wrote, “I never knew when I started working on this case in 1993 that I would face jail for standing up for the rights of my clients, who have been victimized by what is probably the world’s worst oil pollution…. Quite simply, Judge Kaplan and Chevron are working in lockstep to try and destroy me and my clients.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadoran judge who admitted to lying about his interactions with Donziger, became the target of outrage after he testified in support of Chevron.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The saga began in the 1980s, when Ecuadorans in the rain forest started to protest Texaco’s contamination. The company left Ecuador in 1992, after having dumped crude oil, drilling muds, and an oily, watery mixture known as formation water into unlined waste pits—a procedure that has been outlawed in Texas since 1969. Texaco also released billions of gallons of oil-laced water into the rain forest’s streams and lakes, even though the standard procedure in the United States has long been to inject the potentially toxic compounds safely deep underground.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Five peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown an increased incidence of cancer and other health risks in the area<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">(Chevron funded its own peer-reviewed study, which claimed to find no such cancer risk.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>About 20 grassroots organizations formed the Amazon Defense Coalition in the mid-1990s, and Donziger, a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, started representing the group in 1993.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Ecuadorans originally sued Texaco in the United States, but after years of delay, a federal judge in New York sent the case to Ecuador in 2001. More than a decade later, Chevron lost. Three levels of Ecuadoran courts up to the Supreme Court ratified the verdict and awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion. (Though even if Chevron honored the decision, none of the rain forest residents would receive a check. Instead, the Amazon Defense Coalition would use the money to scour the soil of toxins and build treatment centers for cancer patients.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Nation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ECUADOR’S BATTLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AGAINST CHEVRON</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James North</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Chevron defended itself at every stage of the proceedings in Ecuador, and for years it never challenged the legitimacy of the process. But in 2010 it changed strategies. Chevron launched a countersuit in a New York federal court, alleging that Donziger and his allies had committed bribery and fraud in Ecuador to win the case</b>.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The company invoked the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,</span>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">originally designed to prosecute the Mafia, and in 2011, Kaplan presided over a new trial. Donziger and the Ecuadoran codefendants expected that such serious charges would be tried before a jury, but at the last minute, Chevron dropped its demand for monetary damages.<b>&nbsp;Under RICO law, this meant Donziger and the others lost their right to appear before a jury and Kaplan alone would decide the facts of the case.</b>&nbsp;Charles Nesson, a Harvard law professor, wrote recently in the Harvard Law Record that “Chevron amended its demands to cheat Donziger out of a jury.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>From the beginning of the RICO trial, Kaplan made his pro-business outlook clear. He lauded Chevron as “a company of considerable importance to our economy that employs thousands all over the world, that supplies a group of commodities—gasoline, heating oil, other fuels, and lubricants</b>—on which every one of us depends every single day. I don’t think there is anybody in this courtroom who wants to pull his car into a gas station to fill up and finds that there isn’t any gas there.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">During the case, Chevron claimed that Donziger and his clients had bribed the original trial judge in Ecuador. Chevron’s star witness was Alberto Guerra, a former judge who lost his position on the Ecuadoran bench because of corruption accusations and later, in testimony before an international trade tribunal, admitted to lying about his interactions with Donziger.&nbsp;<b>The oil giant acknowledged paying Guerra and moving him and his family to a secret location in the United States</b>. In all, Donziger estimated that Chevron has spent&nbsp;<b>$2 million on the ex-judge.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Catastrophe: Cofan women stand near a pool of oil. Texaco spilled billions of gallons of contaminated water in Ecuador’s Amazon region. (Dolores Ochoa / AP)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Chevron’s lawyers rehearsed Guerra’s testimony with him 53 times and then put him on the stand in front of Kaplan.</b>&nbsp;In his testimony, the disgraced ex-judge asserted that Donziger and an Ecuadoran lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, had offered him a $500,000 bribe and that Donziger and Fajardo had ghostwritten the final judgment against Chevron. Nicolás Zambrano, the judge who had rendered the decision in Ecuador, denied Guerra’s testimony, but Kaplan accepted Guerra’s account, dismissed Zambrano, and found Donziger and his Ecuadoran colleagues guilty in 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Chevron’s legal offensive is an example of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP, suit</b>. Over the past few decades, corporations have brought an increasing number of SLAPP suits against environmental and human rights groups. The idea is to spend so much money that your underfunded opponents are forced to give up.<b>&nbsp;The oil giant presumably also has a related aim: to prevent the plaintiffs from ever collecting their cleanup money</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Kaplan’s verdict in the RICO case means Chevron can refuse to pay them in the United States. Chevron has long since sold its remaining holdings in Ecuador, so now Donziger and the Amazon Defense Front have to chase the corporation to other countries where it still does business. Chevron’s lawyers are already trying to use the New York RICO judgment to discredit legal efforts against the company in Canada and elsewhere.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Kaplan’s persecution of Donziger did not stop after the RICO verdict. Donziger faces criminal contempt charges because he has so far refused to turn over his personal computer and cell phone to Chevron, as Kaplan ordered him to do last March</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Donziger said in a press release that he is defending his clients, because his electronic communications would give Chevron’s lawyers “backdoor access to spy on everything we are planning, thinking, and doing.” He said he wants to wait until the US Court of Appeals hears his defense, after which he will promptly hand over his computer and phone if the higher court confirms Kaplan’s directive.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Sean Comey, Chevron’s senior adviser on corporate issues, litigation, and financial communications, declined to comment for this article</b>. As a result, I was unable to ask him a series of questions, including: Is your company still paying Guerra for his cooperation? How much is it continuing to spend on the legal case? Why do attorneys representing Chevron appear at every hearing against Donziger, even ones that don’t involve the oil company? And what is Chevron’s role, if any, in the multiple legal attacks against Donziger?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Show of hands: Protesters in New York City, some with symbolically oil-stained hands, demonstrate against Chevron in 2013. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, residents in the Amazon rain forest live and work on poisoned land. Donziger cautions that their plight must remain the center of the case. He works closely with&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Luis Yanza, the elected leader of the Amazon Defense Coalition and a lifelong defender of the environment; in 2008, Yanza won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize,&nbsp;</span>an award for frontline activists. Donziger and Yanza have talked and e-mailed regularly for more than 25 years, and Donziger, who is fluent in Spanish, estimated that he has visited Ecuador 250 times to consult with his clients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Yanza told me that cancer continues to afflict people in the rain forest</b>. “I visited several of our communities just last weekend, and each one had two or three cases of cancer, including a girl,” he said. And there is no adequate treatment facility in the Lago Agrio area, he added. “The closest cancer treatment center is in Quito, which is seven to 12 hours by bus, depending on where you live.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Luis Yanza, the elected leader of the Amazon Defense Coalition, speaks at a protest against Chevron in 2008. (AP Photo / Paul Sakuma)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He is indignant about the attacks on Donziger. “Steven is totally the opposite of how Chevron portrays him,” Yanza said. “He’s dedicated his life—a great part of his life—to defending people in our poor communities.” Yanza also dismissed the insinuations of critics that Donziger is manipulating the unsophisticated rain forest inhabitants. “This is the mentality of imperialism, saying that we don’t have the capacity to think and to act, to make decisions about our own lives. Steven and others in the United States do provide technical and legal help, but the fundamental decisions are made by us here.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donziger’s critics say that he is mainly after his percentage of the judgment, that he’s an ambulance-chasing attorney who found his way to the rain forest. But if that were true, wouldn’t Donziger have given up by now? Surely he would have cut his losses, dusted off his Harvard Law diploma, and found another potential money-making scheme. Instead, he has remained under house arrest for nearly eight months.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Donziger is also fighting to get his law license reinstated. (It was suspended in 2018 without a hearing, based on Kaplan’s findings in the contempt case.</b>) In September and October, he appeared several times at a New York Bar Association hearing in lower Manhattan, before a polite referee named John Horan. The cramped, low-ceilinged hearing room was filled with human rights lawyers and environmentalists who support Donziger—as well as a few conservatively dressed attorneys representing Chevron. A parade of witnesses testified to Donziger’s honesty and integrity, including&nbsp;<b>Rex Weyler, a founder of Greenpeace; Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd; and Simon Taylor, one of the directors of Global Witness</b>, the influential inter­national anti-corruption organization<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. On February 24, Horan found in Donziger’s favor and recommended that his law license be restored.&nbsp;</span>Horan, a former prosecutor, sharply criticized Chevron’s vendetta, writing, “The extent of [Donziger’s] pursuit by Chevron is so extravagant, and at this point so unnecessary and punitive, [that] while not a factor in my recommendation, [it] is nonetheless background to it.” Horan’s decision must now be reviewed by a New York state court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steven Donziger addresses a press conference in Ecuador in 2014. Today he’s under house arrest. (Rodrigo Buendia / AFP via Getty Images)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On November 25, Donziger appeared before Senior US District Judge Loretta Preska, who will preside over his criminal contempt trial, to ask that his confinement be ended and replaced by an $800,000 bail bond, guaranteed by a number of his supporters.</b>&nbsp;His attorney, Andrew Frisch, reminded the court that Donziger has a family and is not likely to abandon it to flee the United States. What’s more, Frisch pointed out, doing so would mean abandoning his clients in Ecuador. “For 25 years,” he noted, “Mr. Donziger has had his skin, his heart, and his soul in this cause, which is bigger than him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the end, Preska turned down the request. “Mr. Donziger has ties to Ecuador, we know, indeed, to high-ranking government officials,” she said. “We know he has traveled to Ecuador on numerous, numerous occasions…. I find that he remains a flight risk, and accordingly, the request to eliminate monitoring and home confinement is denied</span>.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Donziger’s trial isn’t scheduled to begin until June 15.</b>&nbsp;He is again challenging his home detention, but he could remain confined to his apartment until then. If this effort fails, he will have spent more than 300 days under house arrest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Donziger described what it’s like to live under these circumstances. “Sleep is difficult because my ankle bracelet actually blinks and talks,” he said. “A voice reminds me to recharge the battery, which allows the state to monitor my every movement.</span>” The bracelet is “like a giant black claw that clings to your lower leg. It’s designed to be a constant reminder of your banishment, to&nbsp;<b>disorient you psychologically. Of course,” he added, “Chevron and Judge Kaplan want me to be consumed with my survival—rather than helping the indigenous people of Ecuador collect their judgment.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James North has reported from Africa, Latin America, and Asia for four decades. He lives in New York City.</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/16448/chevrons-slapp-suit-against-ecuadorians-corporate-intimidation/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/16448/chevrons-slapp-suit-against-ecuadorians-corporate-intimidation/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx many</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Chevron’s SLAPP suit against Ecuadorians: corporate intimidation</b></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by Rex Weyler&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CO-FOUNDER</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">11 May 2018 |</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">These days, when powerful corporations get caught breaking the law, polluting the Earth, violating human rights, or all of those crimes simultaneously, they don’t pay the fine and make amends, like normal citizens. They attack.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Corporate lawyers spend millions to assault victims with SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). The most recent SLAPP strategy in the US, popularized by attack-dog New York law firm&nbsp;<b>Gibson Dunn, employs US “racketeering” (RICO) laws</b>&nbsp;against environmental groups, victims of pollution, and their lawyers.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The purpose of a SLAPP lawsuit is not necessarily to win in court, but rather to intimidate, harass, demonize, and bankrupt the weaker opponent.</b>&nbsp;“The powerful use their abundance of resources to enact revenge,” explains the American Civil Liberties Union. Many jurisdictions now ban SLAPP suits, but corporations still shop around for lax jurisdictions and sympathetic judges.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2013, for example, when Greenpeace Canada exposed Resolute Forest Products’ destructive logging in Québec, Resolute filed a retaliatory $7-million lawsuit against Greenpeace Canada and two staff members in Ontario, which did not yet have anti-SLAPP laws. Later, Resolute used US courts to attack Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, created in 1970 to prosecute organized crime syndicates. “This lawsuit,” said Greenpeace US director Annie Leonard, “is an attempt to silence, vilify, and criminalize activism.” As with most of these intimidation lawsuits, the RICO case in the US was thrown out of court, but Resolute promptly filed an amended suit.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In perhaps the most vindictive SLAPP in history, Chevron — one of the world’s largest corporations, with over $260-billion in assets — found a sympathetic New York judge to accept a RICO lawsuit against the victims of its vast oil pollution in Ecuador’s Amazon basin.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Legal thuggery</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chevron’s Amazon troubles began in 2000 when it purchased Texaco, inheriting liability for the company’s oil field pollution in Ecuador, known as the Amazon Chernobyl. Texaco/Chevron had dumped some 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and abandoned over 900 carcinogenic waste pits. The Indigenous rainforest inhabitants claim they were left with destroyed land, polluted water, and an epidemic of cancer and birth defects.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Abandoned toxic oil dump, Ecuador. Courtesy of Amazon Watch Abandoned toxic oil dump, Ecuador. Courtesy of Amazon Watch]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1993, the victims sued for damages in the US. Chevron fought for nine years to shift the case to Ecuador, where they may have expected to influence the courts. Chevron fully accepted jurisdiction in Ecuador, where the case began in 2003. Six years later, in light of overwhelming scientific evidence, Chevron realized that they would likely lose. In 2009 the oil company hired the notorious “rescue squad” law firm of Gibson Dunn, found a corporate-friendly Judge, Lewis A. Kaplan in New York, and began a series of SLAPP attacks on the victims, on their lawyers, and on the Ecuadorian judicial system. Over the next five years, Kaplan allowed virtually any Chevron motion, denied defendant motions, mocked the victims and their lawyers, and allowed a RICO racketeering case against two Ecuadoreans — Secoya Indigenous leader Javier Piaguaje and farmer Hugo Camacho — and their American lawyer, Steven Donziger.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Meanwhile, in Ecuador, the Indigenous and peasant villagers won a $9.5 billion compensation judgment, confirmed by appellate courts and by Ecuador’s Supreme Court (Court of Cessation). In response, Chevron sold its assets in Ecuador, fled the country, refused to pay, and threatened the victims with a “lifetime of litigation.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The company has since retained over 60 law firms, 2,000 lawyers, paralegals, six public relations firms, squads of private investigators, and at least one bribed witness, who later admitted to lying. Lawyers for the victims estimate Chevron has spent over $2 billion to avoid payment of the court judgement, the largest collection of SLAPP suits in history.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (Gibson Dunn) promotes itself as a corporate “rescue squad” specializing in “shielding clients” from “billions in liability”</b>. They boast of getting George W. Bush installed as US president by stopping a Florida vote recount, and shielding Lehman Brothers from liabilities in the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Randy Mastro co-chairs the firm’s litigation department</b>;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;infamous for a string of court censures for fabricating evidence, lying and other criminal misconduct. In 2015, the High Court of England sanctioned Gibson Dunn for fabricating evidence to frame the political rival of the firm’s client, the President of Djibouti, Africa.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In 2005, a federal court in California sanctioned Gibson Dunn for tampering with a witness, “obstruction, gamesmanship and flagrant disregard” of Court orders. I</b>n 2007, the Montana Supreme Court assessed a $9.9 million fine against Gibson Dunn for “blatantly and maliciously trying to intimidate” its adversary, using the judicial system for “legal thuggery”. The following year, a New York federal judge sanctioned the firm for “unacceptable shenanigans”, including hiding documents and outright lies. A California federal judge concluded that the firm’s misconduct is “a product of a culture which permeates” Gibson Dunn.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>As Chevron faced losing the pollution case in Ecuador, CEO John Watson and General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate turned to Gibson Dunn’s “rescue squad” for help.</b>The lawyers, led by Mastro, soon revealed their abusive tactics. An Oregon federal judge sanctioned the Gibson Dunn lawyers for using the discovery process — intended to provide information to opposing counsel — to harass a small legal non-profit assisting the Ecuadorian victims. In Ecuador, appellate judges rebuked Chevron’s new lawyers for threatening trial Judge Nicolas Zambrano with criminal charges and prison unless he dismissed the case.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, the Ecuadorian decision stood, Chevron owed its victims $9.5 billion, and Randy Mastro went to work harassing the victims, their lawyers, and the Ecuadorian justice system before a gleefully encouraging Judge Kaplan in New York.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Judge as prosecutor</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Chevron and Gibson Dunn knew precisely who Judge Kaplan was, when they launched their series of SLAPP suits through his court.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In 2004, Kaplan allowed the NY Police Department to arrest any “recognizable group” of 50 or more cyclists riding together, as a way of stopping bicycle protests, specifically by the environmental group Critical Mass</b>. Although the First Amendment of the US Constitution protects “freedom of assembly”, Kaplan argued that “traffic flow” held precedent over the right of citizens to assemble in peaceful protest.&nbsp;<b>When Lehman Brothers employees sued Lehmans for failing to protect their pension plan, violating the Employee Retirement Security Act, Kaplan simply dismissed the case.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">At The Robing Room, a judicial review forum, one commenter warned, “if you are representing big business interests, Judge Kaplan will find a way to rule in your favor. If you going up against big business interests, you are out of luck.” Others describe Kaplan as “working for business interests” and “part of the old-boy network.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“We knew that Gibson Dunn and Chevron had selected Judge Kaplan as an ally,” said Steven Donziger, lawyer for the original Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (FDA).&nbsp;</b>“A normal judge’s responsibility is to insure impartiality, decorum, and legal integrity. In the RICO SLAPP suit, Kaplan served more as a member of the prosecution team. He mocked defendants, laughed at defense motions, praised Chevron, granted their every wish, and insulted the entire Ecuadorian justice system.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Marathon of preliminaries</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The highly unusual three year discovery and deposition process, prior to the actual trial, revealed a succession of nightmarish legal irregularities:</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">No media confidentiality: The SLAPP began in April 2010, when Kaplan forced filmmaker, Joseph Berlinger to turn over 600 hours of outtakes from his acclaimed 2009 documentary, Crude: The Real Price of Oil.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kaplan ridiculed the journalist’s request to protect confidential sources. “If this is your best argument,” jeered Kaplan, “you’re in a lot of trouble.” A media coalition — including The New York Times, NBC, and HBO — filed a First Amendment objection with the court, and Robert Redford, writing in the Huffington Post, called the decision a “shocking” betrayal of US First Amendment rights.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Insulting a foreign Court: Kaplan and Chevron lawyer Mastro used the Berlinger hearings to insult the courts in Ecuador, where Chevron had insisted the trial be held. Mastro called the Ecuador courts “a sham” that would cause “any American to shudder at … what passes for a judicial system</b>.” Kaplan openly laughed when asked to delay until an Ecuadorian court could provide input. “If this were the High Court in London,” Kaplan taunted, “you can be sure I’d wait.” Despite Mastro and Kaplan’s disdain here, the Ecuadorian justice system appears as impartial and honourable as any such system in any modern nation.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Insulting the defendants: Throughout the proceedings and in written memoranda, Kaplan referred to the 30,000 class-action victims in Ecuador as “so-called plaintiffs”, suggesting that their “standing in this matter is debatable to say the least</b>.” He referred to their case in Ecuador as “the game” and “not a bona fide litigation.” When Donziger’s attorney made a routine request for time to review thousands of documents, Kaplan scoffed, “Don’t tell me about how long Mr. Donziger needs. I know the game here.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>No attorney-client confidentiality:</b>&nbsp;Kaplan invoked a minor technicality to claim that Donziger, the victims’ US lawyer, had “waived” all attorney-client privilege, and insisted he turn over to Chevron lawyers 17-years of confidential communications with his clients, including, emails, notes, and his entire hard drive. Defense attorneys called this “the most sweeping forced production of privileged documents in history.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>Monster deposition:&nbsp;</b>Federal rules typically limit individual depositions to one day, possibly two days in extraordinary cases. Once Chevron had all of Donziger’s confidential client files, they forced him, with Kaplan’s approval, to endure an unorthodox 18 days of discovery deposition, during which 20 or more Chevron/Gibson Dunn lawyers pelted him with petty and personal questions. According to Donziger’s RICO case rebuttal, Chevron’s lead PR consultant, revealed in 2009:&nbsp;<b>“Our L-T [long-term] strategy is to demonize Donziger.”</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Special Master</b>:</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Judge Kaplan appointed his former law partner, Max Gitter, as “Special Master” or private judge to rule over the protracted deposition, paid entirely by Chevron</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>. According to the Amazon Defense Coalition, Kaplan approved secret payments to Gitter, totaling “likely well over $1 million</b>.” Like Kaplan, Gitter approved Chevron requests and dismissed defense requests.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He revealed his conspiratorial relationship with Mastro and Chevron when he made a ruling based on the contents of a future Chevron document that had not yet been filed with the court. Upon realizing his error, he muttered, “Mr. Mastro, am I correct about that?” Mastro responded, “absolutely correct.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Judge proposes Chevron strategy:&nbsp;</b>During the discovery hearings, Judge Kaplan exclaimed: “Do the phrases Hobbs Act, extortion, RICO, have any bearing here?” signaling to Chevron lawyers that they should file a racketeering complaint. Shortly thereafter, on February 1, 2011, Chevron filed their RICO complaint against Donziger, Piaguaje, and Camacho, claiming that the 10-year case before three levels of Ecuadorian courts amounted to criminal extortion. Chevron asked for billions of dollars in damages, from Donziger, a sole practitioner, and two impoverished villagers, which required a jury trial. Kaplan accepted the claim and assigned the case to himself.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>International powers:&nbsp;</b>After the RICO filing, Judge Kaplan presumed to issue a universal injunction, allegedly prohibiting any court in any nation from enforcing the environmental judgment against Chevron, two days before the Ecuadorian court announced that judgment. In September, 2011, the US Court of Appeals vacated the injunction, chastizing Kaplan for inflicting damage on international comity, the principle among modern nations to show respect for each other’s legal systems.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Implacable hostility:</b>&nbsp;By this time, Donziger and the Ecuadorian victims were almost broke, which Donziger claims, “was the whole point of Mastro’s and Chevron’s strategy.” Nevertheless, renowned defense attorney, John Keker, a former US marine, highly respected for legal integrity, offered to help the beleaguered defendants. “This case has degenerated into a Dickensian farce,” Keker said. “Encouraged by this Court’s implacable hostility toward Donziger, Chevron will file any motion, however meritless, in the hope that the Court will use it to hurt Donziger.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>Fishing expeditions:&nbsp;</b>Chevron served Donziger, Piaguaje, and Camacho, with hundreds of new document requests and over a thousand “requests for admission,” disputed claims that&nbsp;<b>Chevron could argue were “admitted” if the defendants could not respond</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>. The impoverished Ecuadorian peasants kept almost no documents and rarely engaged in written communication.</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The requests imposed a massive new expense for the defendants.<b>&nbsp;Kaplan also allowed Chevron to serve subpoenas on Amazon Watch, Google, Microsoft, and others, seeking email accounts to track the activities of some 100 lawyers, students, journalists, and academics</b>&nbsp;that supported the Ecuadorian’s cause. “These were fishing expeditions,” Donziger explained, “that violated everyone’s right to privacy.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Scorched Earth:&nbsp;</b>By May 2013, before the actual trial had even begun, the defendants were thoroughly destitute, and their defense attorneys — Keker and Craig Smyser, who had been deferring payment — could no longer continue</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Both attorneys expressed outrage at Kaplan’s refusal to grant common sense measures to streamline the burdensome process. “Through scorched-earth litigation, executed by its army of hundreds of lawyers,” said Keker, “Chevron is using its limitless resources to crush defendants and win this case through might rather than merit.”<b>&nbsp;Smyser, called the lawsuit a “legal blitzkrieg” that Kaplan not only tolerated but “encouraged”.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">After four years of gruelling discovery depositions and document demands by Chevron — the exhausted defendants’ best hope for justice rested on the trial jury. A jury would remove some decision-making power from Kaplan, and would hear overwhelming evidence of Chevron pollution and legal misdeeds. However, Kaplan had new surprises in store.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[pix Ecuadorians and P. Bellegarde, court, 2018 © Johanna LunaHugo Camacho, Amazon Defense Coalition (second from left) was one of the villagers named in the US RICO case. Here, he joins Domingo Paes, Achuar; Canadian Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Perry Bellegarde, Janeth Cuji, Kichwa; and&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rafael Pandam, President of the Indigenous Amazonian Parliament of Ecuador, in a Canadian court]</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The RICO Trial</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>No jury:</b><b>&nbsp;On the eve of the trial, Chevron decided, with Kaplan’s approval, to drop their financial damages claim, which meant that Kaplan could drop the jury and decide the outcome himself. “Chevron,” said Donziger, “apparently panicked at the notion of trying to sell their fraud and extortion claims to anyone other than Kaplan.” The defense demanded a jury trial, based on their right to a jury in a RICO case,</b>&nbsp;a long-standing legal principle in cases that carry criminal implications. Kaplan refused. He would decide himself about the defendants’ guilt or innocence.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>No pollution talk</b>: Even though Kaplan had presumed the authority to “set aside” an Ecuadorian environmental judgment with a 10-year, 220,000-page evidentiary record of Chevron’s environmental crimes, and to characterize that entire proceeding as an act of “extortion,”&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">the corporate-friendly judge barred the defense from even mentioning anything “related to the existence of pollution in Ecuador.” The pollution, he said, was “not relevant.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>No dirty-tricks talk:&nbsp;</b>Furthermore, Kaplan ruled that the defense could not mention evidence of Chevron’s campaign or Gibson Dunn’s campaign of “dirty tricks” operations, past courtroom crimes, lies, and fabricated evidence. Chevron, of course, was allowed to discuss any alleged history of the defendants, dredged up from four years of ruthless depositions, spies, and private investigators.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tsunami of paper</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">: On the first day of trial, Chevron placed over 2,500 exhibits into evidence en masse, nearly 10,000 separate assertions, to which the impoverished defense was given less than a week to respond. If they failed, Kaplan could deem the defendants’ objection “waived.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Anonymous witnesses:</b>&nbsp;Kaplan accepted testimony from Chevron witnesses whose identity they kept hidden from the defense, preventing the normal investigation necessary for effective cross-examination. The defense expressed outrage at this violation of “basic legal principles,” which they said would “be right at home in the Spanish Inquisition.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Editing the evidence:</b>&nbsp;At this point, the&nbsp;<b>defense caught Randy Mastro presenting edited video,</b>&nbsp;in which he had cut out critical contextual words from Mr. Donziger’s comments. According to trial transcripts, when the defense brought this to the judge’s attention, Kaplan adjourned, did some research, and responded: “About 15 words were edited out … I assume there was no attempt to mislead.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Chevron’s claim that the entire Ecuadorian judicial process — ten years of court trials and appellate reviews in three levels of courts — had been “fraudulent” rested, however, almost entirely upon one, single witnes</b>s.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[ pix Steven Donziger at oil well © Lisa GibbonsSteven Donziger, lawyer for the Ecuador plaintiffs for 25 years, at oil site in Ecuador’s Amazon]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The Witness</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In American Lawyer magazine, in 2009, David Hechler, describes Gibson Dunn’s “game plan,” to shield clients from liability in foreign pollution cases: “find witnesses” who will accuse the foreign court of “fraud.” In a separate American Lawyer story, Gibson, Dunn lawyer Robert Cooper, explains, “We prepared the witnesses to tell our story.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In Ecuador, on behalf of Chevron, Gibson Dunn found one such witness, Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorian judge who had been removed for misconduct, including accepting bribes.</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to Amazon Watch, Chevron lawyer Andres Rivero and Chevron private investigator Yohi Ackerman paid Guerra $48,000 in cash, and agreed to pay him $12,000 a month for at least three years. Chevron lawyers allegedly negotiated and smoothed Guerra’s immigration into the US, paid for his family to move, hired lawyers to get them green cards, and bought them a car, auto insurance, and health insurance.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Justice Now protest, Ecuador. Photo courtesy of amazonwatch.orgJustice Now protest, Ecuador. Photo courtesy of amazonwatch.org]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to a letter from the defense to the US Department of Justice, Chevron has paid Guerra at least $2 million in cash and benefits, in exchange for false testimony. According to an affidavit by legal ethicist Erwin Chemerinsky — Founding Dean of the University of California at Irvine School of Law and a prominent US legal scholar — these payments to Guerra violated fundamental ethical rules of law.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In New York, over 53 days by Guerra’s admission, Gibson Dunn’s Randy Mastro helped him prepare his testimony about “fraud” in Ecuador</b>. On the stand before judge Kaplan, Guerra claimed that Ecuadorian lawyers promised presiding judge Nicolas Zambrano $500,000 to allow them to write the final judgment, which Guerra claimed they gave to Zambrano on a flash drive. Guerra also claimed that he possessed a draft copy of the fraudulent judgment and that he met with the plaintiffs’ American lawyer Steven Donziger to discuss the alleged “bribe”.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Quickly, however, Guerra’s story fell apart.&nbsp;</b>Immigration records showed that Donziger was not even in Ecuador when Guerra claims the meeting took place. No evidence of a flash drive was ever produced, and Guerra’s computers did not turn up the draft judgment, or even a single email from the plaintiffs’ attorneys.<b>&nbsp;When this came to light, Guerra changed his story, claiming that after “strengthening my memory”&nbsp;</b>he now recalled working on this draft, not at home, but rather had taken an eight-hour bus ride into the jungle, where he claimed he edited the judgment on a laptop handed to him by one of the Ecuadorians’ lawyers.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>However, this story crumbled as well</b>&nbsp;when forensic analysis showed that the trial judge had never downloaded the judgement from a flash drive and, rather, had opened and saved his own written judgement document more than 400 times over three months on his own office computer.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Furthermore, after the RICO trial, in a separate arbitration under the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, Guerra admitted under oath that he had lied to Chevron’s lawyers about his involvement in the alleged attempt to influence the Ecuadorian judgement</b>. “I did exaggerate about [some things], yes,” said Guerra under questioning. When a lawyer asked him, “And among the ways you tried to leverage your position was to falsely tell the Chevron representatives that the Plaintiffs had offered you $300,000?” Guerra answered, “Yes, sir. I lied there.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Nevertheless, Kaplan accepted Guerra’s testimony and rejected defense efforts&nbsp;</b>— Motion to strike testimony and Motion for terminating sanctions — to strike Guerra’s testimony, which the defense claims was fabricated during the 53-day session with Chevron lawyers.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The final twist appeared as Judge Kaplan crafted a judgment. By dropping the money claim, Chevron had avoided a jury but also undermined its own case. A plaintiff must seek either money for damages or an injunction, a court-ordered condition placed on the defendant. The Court of Appeals had already reversed Kaplan’s earlier injunction and could do so again. Without a money claim or injunction, Chevron lacked standing.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Perhaps to avoid this problem, Kaplan based his guilty verdict on a “non-statutory claim for equitable relief” from an allegedly fraudulent judgment.</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to Donziger’s rebuttal, the decision lacked “due process,” since the claim had never been presented by Chevron or argued in court, and “relied on vague 18th and 19th century treatises” that “had been effectively repealed and replaced by the statutory framework for enforcement of foreign judgments … during the twentieth century.” Typically, a judge can’t invent a new claim for the plaintiff after a trial has ended.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The Republic of Ecuador filed an Amicus Brief, stating that “Judge Lewis Kaplan reached far beyond the issues presented to unfairly—and unnecessarily—impugn the integrity of the Republic of Ecuador.</b>” They stated that Kaplan’s “unfounded commentary”, against a “sovereign democracy”, was based on “unreliable evidence”.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Ecuadorian court charged that Kaplan relied almost exclusively on one Vladimiro Álvarez Grau, an avowed political opponent of the Ecuadorian government.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Chevron sought out a favorable forum,” the Ecuadorian court wrote. “The District Court [Kaplan], fulfilling Chevron’s wishes, chose to make far-reaching judgments based primarily on the opinions of a single partisan.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Finally, the Ecuadorian court confirmed that Chevron Corporation remained responsible for the impact of its pollutio</b>n.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;“In 2005,” the court wrote, “ChevronTexaco dropped the name ‘Texaco’ and reverted to its original name, Chevron Corporation. There is no indication in the record before us that shortening its name had any effect on ChevronTexaco’s legal obligations. Chevron Corporation therefore remains accountable.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Furthermore, in a separate discovery hearing, the US Third Circuit court cautioned: “The circumstances supporting [Chevron’s] claim of fraud largely are allegations and allegations are not factual findings.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">This historic SLAPP lawsuit, possibly the most expensive in history, appears to have failed, even after Kaplan’s decision.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Foreign courts have ignored Kaplan’s injunction, and Donziger and his clients are making progress in Canadian courts, where the victims are attempting to collect the Ecuadorian judgment by seizing Chevron Canada’s assets, and where they have won three consecutive unanimous appellate court decisions. Donziger and the Ecuadorian villagers have said they would welcome Chevron to claim in Canada that the Ecuadorian judgment was fraudulent. “If they had to bring Guerra to Canada before a neutral judge,” says Donziger, “we believe the company’s entire RICO narrative will collapse.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>SLAPP suits represent a threat to public protest and free speech. They have no place in a democracy.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">References and Links</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ecuador Supreme Court (Court of Cessation): court ruling in Ecuadorean class action vs. Chevron Corporation.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ACLU, Slapped: A Tool for Activists: ACLU</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chevron assets: Fortune magazine.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chevron: 60 law firms and 2000 lawyers: Amazon Watch, CSR.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chevron threatens plaintiffs with a “Lifetime of litigation.”: (1) “Chevron Accused of $2 Million Witness Bribery Plot in Ecuador Pollution Case, Alternet, January 31, 2018; and (2) Writ of Mandamus, Feb. 6, 2011: pdf</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gibson Dunn, “rescue squad,” “shielding clients”: Gibson Dunn promotions</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gibson Dunn censure by High Court of England: “Chevron Law Firm Gibson Dunn Blasted by High Court of England For Falsifying Evidence: Chevron Pit, March 25, 2015.” Montana Supreme Court assessed a $9.9 million fine against Gibson Dunn: Montana Supreme Court document, 05-378, 2007, MT 62.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ecuador, appellate judges rebuke Chevron’s lawyers for threatening trial Judge Nicolas Zambrano.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gibson Dunn in Ecuador: under scrutiny for trying to mislead Congress</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">California, 2005, censure of Gibson Dunn</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gibson Dunn sanctioned by a federal judge for harassing a witness in a discovery action in Oregon.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Comments about Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on legal review site: The Robing Room</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Robert Redford objects to Kaplan denial of media confidentiality: Huffington Post</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">New York Times, NBC, and HBO file a First Amendment objection with the court. NPR</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kaplan and Mastro insult the courts in Ecuador: “Writ of Mandamus, US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, Hugo Gerardo Camacho Naranjo and Javier Piaguaje Payaguaje, petitioners, filed by Attorneys: James E. Tyrrell Jr. NY, Julio C. Gomez, NY, and Carlos A. Zelaya, II, Feb. 6, 2011: pdf</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Allegations of bias by Kaplan: Writ of Mandamus, Feb. 6, 2011: pdf; and “Chevron’s RICO Fraud” pdf</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Our L-T [long-term] strategy is to demonize Donziger.” — Chevron’s lead PR consultant, 2009: (1) “Chevron’s RICO Fraud” pdf and (2) “Chevron Accused of $2 Million Witness Bribery Plot in Ecuador Pollution Case, Alternet, January 31, 2018</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chevron’s RICO Fraud: An Abuse of Indigenous Peoples, the Environment, and U.S. Courts in the Chevron v. Donziger Case; S. Donziger and the Ecuadorian Legal Team: pdf.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Defendant’s right to a jury in a RICO case: CSR, 6 February, 2014.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Defense calls anonymous witnesses a violation of “basic legal principles … right at home in the Spanish Inquisition.”: US District Court, Southern District of New York, Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK-JCF Document 1154 Filed 05/14/13, “Opposition to Chevron’s Motion for an order to Further protecting the Confidential declaration of Doe3.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gibson Dunn “game plan”: (1) “District Court Denies Enforcement of $97 Million Nicaraguan Judgment,” Gibson Dunn; and (2) “The Kill Step,” David Hechler, Sept. 20, 2009, The American Lawyer</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Randy Mastro and Gibson Dunn lawyers preparing Guerra over 53 days: Huffington Post, Paul Paz y Miño, May 30, 2017.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Guerra bribed by Chevron: (1) “Chevron Accused of $2 Million Witness Bribery Plot in Ecuador Pollution Case, Alternet, January 31, 2018; (2) “Chevron’s RICO Fraud,” legal rebuttal: pdf. Guerra bribed by Chevron: Huffington Post, Dec. 6, 2017; (3) “Chevron Executives Misused Millions of Shareholder Dollars To Bribe a Witness,” Amazon Watch, May 30, 2017.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Alberto Guerra admits lying in RICO testimony: (1) US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Chevron Corporation vs. Steven Donziger, Hugo Gerardo Camacho Naranjo, et. al.; No. 14-826-cv(L), November 5, 2015. (2) “Chevron’s Star Witness Admits to Lying in the Amazon Pollution Case, Vice News, Eva Hershaw, October 26, 2015 (with Testimony from arbitration under the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty); (3) U.S. Courts Endorsed Chevron’s Fabricated Evidence: Ecuadorian Villagers and Counsel Slam Chevron’s Star Witness for Lying and Offer Rebuttals to 12 False Findings by Second Circuit Court of Appeals”: CSR wire, May 16, 2017; and (4) Chevron’s RICO Fraud: pdf.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Judge Kaplan Drastically Overreached With “Unlawful” Injunction To Protect Chevron, International Law Experts Say,” Rainforest Action Network.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Defense documents requesting to strike Guerra’s false testimony, citing evidence that Guerra lied, and admitted to lying: (1) Motion to strike testimony of Alberto Guerra Bastides, pdf and (2) Motion for terminating sanctions, pdf.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Rainforest Groups Blast U.S. Judge Kaplan for Ruling Designed to Help Chevron Evade $9.5b Pollution Liability,” CSR wire, March 9, 2018.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Republic of Ecuador’s Amicus Brief denouncing the Kaplan judgement based on false testimony from a bribed witness, and denouncing Kaplan’s insults toward Ecuadorian courts.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">US Third Circuit court, Chevron’s claim of fraud are allegations, not facts: Writ of Mandamus, US Court of Appeals, Case: 11-2259, 06/02/2011.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kaplan’s judgement based on 18th and 19th century treatises: Judgement transcript: District Court, Southern District of New York: Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK-JCF, Document 1874, Filed 03/04/14, Page 330 of 497.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chevron lacked standing: (Article III , U.S. Constitution; the US Supreme Court has held that federal courts may hear “cases and controversies” but many not simply issue advisory opinions if there is no claim for “relief.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“In Canada, Chevron Faces New Risks From $12b Ecuador Pollution Judgment As Shareholders Step up Pressure,” Amazon Defense Coalition, FDA, March 23, 2018</div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div>