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</div><div>===</div><div>april 2022</div><div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-donziger-chevron-ecuador/">https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-donziger-chevron-ecuador/</a></div><div>
</div><div>pod</div><div>
</div>this week, after nearly 1,000 days of arbitrary detention, the

environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger was released from

house arrest. On this week’s podcast, Donziger talks to

Intercept investigative reporter Sharon Lerner and Ryan Grim about his <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/">decadelong legal battle</a> with Chevron over land contamination in Ecuador.

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Sharon Lerner: This week on Deconstructed, I’m Sharon Lerner, investigative reporter for The Intercept, sitting in for Ryan Grim.

Our guest this week is Steven

Donziger, the environmental lawyer who sued Chevron and won. Donziger

helped win a multi-billion dollar judgment against the company for the

contamination of land in Ecuador. Specifically, the Lago Agrio region

where he’s been fighting on behalf of Indigenous people and farmers for

more than 25 years.

As Donziger was arguing the case

against Chevron in Ecuador back in 2009, the company said its long-term

strategy was to demonize him. And, since then, Chevron has waged an

all-out assault on Donziger in what’s become one of the most bitter and

drawn-out cases in the history of environmental law.

Chevron has hired private

investigators to track Donziger, created a publication just to smear

him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms,

who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him.

As a result, Donziger has been

disbarred; his bank accounts have been frozen; he has had a lien placed

on his apartment; he faces exorbitant fines; and he was prohibited from

earning money. A court seized his passport and put him on house arrest.

Chevron, which has a market capitalization of $316 billion, has the

funds to continue targeting Donziger for as long as it chooses.

In an emailed statement, Chevron wrote

that: “any jurisdiction that observes the rule of law should find the

fraudulent Ecuadorian judgment to be illegitimate and unenforceable.”

The statement also said that: “Chevron will continue to work to hold the

perpetrators of this fraud accountable for their actions, including

Steven Donziger, who has committed a litany of corrupt and illegal acts

related to his Ecuadorian judicial fraud against Chevron.”

Donziger was charged with contempt of

court for refusing to hand over his computer, cellphone, and other

electronic devices in August of 2019. He had already endured 19 days of

depositions and given Chevron large portions of his case file. To him,

the request for his devices was beyond the pale, and he appealed it on

the grounds that it would require him to violate his commitments to his

clients. Still, Donziger said he’d turn over the devices if he lost the

appeal. Instead, he ended up confined by the court to his Upper West

Side apartment.

Even though the underlying case was

civil, the federal court judge who has presided over the litigation

between Chevron and Donziger since 2011, Lewis Kaplan, drafted criminal

contempt charges against him.

Kaplan ruled in 2014 that the

Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron was invalid because it was obtained

through “egregious fraud” and that Donziger was guilty of racketeering,

extortion, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and

witness tampering.

The decision hinged on the testimony

of an Ecuadorian judge named Alberto Guerra, who claimed that Donziger

had bribed him during the original trial and that the decision against

Chevron had been ghostwritten. In 2015, when Guerra testified in an

international arbitration proceeding, he admitted that he had lied and

changed his story multiple times.

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.

Making the case even more

extraordinary, Kaplan bypassed the standard random assignment process

and handpicked someone he knew well, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska,

to oversee the case being prosecuted by the firm he chose. It was

Preska who sentenced Donziger to home detention and ordered the seizure

of his passport, even though Donziger had appeared in court on hundreds

of previous occasions.

When I visited Donziger in his

apartment last year, he had no idea that he would end up spending more

than 900 days there on house arrest.

On Monday, Donziger was finally

released from house arrest. Ryan Grim and I talked to him shortly

afterwards. Here is our conversation.

[Musical interlude.]

Steve Donziger: I’m feeling great.

SL: Yeah. Big day!

Ryan Grim: Yeah. What day did you get off? I mean, what time?

SD: It was around 9:30-10, maybe, in the morning?

RG: Did you get an alert that

said — I mean, I saw you got an alert that was kind of penal coming

after you at like five in the morning. But then did you get an alert

saying that you’re now a free person?

SD: [Laughs.] No, they don’t do that.

SL: What’s the first thing you did?

SD: Well, I came outside, and

there were some people there and I taped a little talk and took a

picture. And then I went into the subway and came home and my wife was

there. And some of my friends and we hugged, and we rejoiced in the

moment.

I didn’t really fully understand what

freedom was until it was taken away. I’ve lived in my home now for 993

days straight, other than 45 days in federal prison. So it’s been quite

the experience. It lasted a long time for various reasons I think

related to retaliation by Chevron against me for my successful human

rights work in Ecuador. But the cost to me and my family, obviously, was

very, very high. Although, I think at the end of the day, it really is

backfiring against Chevron and that we now have a much bigger, broader

platform to advocate from than we did before.

RG: Does it feel different to

be in your home now that you know you can leave? Like, does the home

itself feel different that you’re there voluntarily?

SD: It does feel different.

Freedom is not only the ability to kind of move around, travel, go out

to eat, do what you want to do when you want to do it within reason.

It’s also a psychological state. I found that I had taken freedom for

granted my whole life. I mean, even just the ability to sort of think:

Eh, maybe later today I’ll go to dinner or maybe later today, I’ll go

see a show or go visit a friend, you know? And what my house arrest did I

mean prison is even worse obviously, but house arrest deprives you of

the ability to plan. It cuts you off from your friends and your social

life. You can’t even think about the future.

I mean, one bizarre feature of my

experience was that when it began, I was pretrial and Covid hit and it

was very unclear how long it would last and Judge Preska, who put the

ankle bracelet on me and forced me into my house on the theory I was a

risk of flight — which was preposterous, and I reject — it was very

clear, she was never going to take that ankle bracelet off even if Covid

lasted five years, and there were no trials being held.

So for a long, long, long period of

time, most of the time I’ve been in detention, it felt like it was an

indefinite detention. And it was. There was no endpoint. And it wasn’t

until I was denied a jury and I had a contempt trial where Judge Preska,

the very person who had locked me up for, by that point, two years and

two months prior to trial, she was my sole fact finder. And of course,

she convicted me after denying me a fair trial, in my opinion. And then

she still — on top of the two years and two months — sentenced me to six

months in prison [laughs] when, again, the maximum sentence for a

misdemeanor is six months. And she gave me the full sentence, not

counting the two years and two months she had already made me stay at

home.

So this was a very, in my opinion,

corporate-generated politicized effort by two federal judges, Judge

Preska and her colleague Judge Kaplan who appointed her to the case and

who charged me with these supposed crimes. I mean, his charges, by the

way, were rejected by the federal prosecutor, but they prosecuted me

anyway with his private corporate law firm that had Chevron as a client.

So there were all sorts of things

happening. But it was very clear that this was a Chevron prosecution.

All the main witnesses in my supposed trial were Chevron lawyers. The

prosecutor was from a Chevron law firm and the judge, Judge Preska, is a

major leader of the Federalist Society where Chevron is a major funder.

So I was surrounded from almost every angle by Chevron during my

supposed trial.

RG: And this is not remotely

the same thing. But when I was in my late teens, I got put on supervised

probation for basically underage drinking, it was an extremely

draconian sentence that was laid out. My travel was restricted. I had to

do weekly drug tests. I had to meet with the probation officer. And

there was something about the entire like, when you talk about the

psychology of it, there’s something about the state, like telling you

that the public has decided that you are a person that needs to be

controlled that is just kind of psychologically devastating, even if you

know that it’s not true. And in my case, I knew it wasn’t true. And in

your case, obviously wildly different, you are a human rights attorney

getting basically by this judge, but there’s still something weighty

about the public having dealt a sentence at you.

Is that related to the restriction of freedom or not?

SD: Well, I think you make a really good point with your question. There’s a certain designed humiliation that takes place —

RG: Mhmm.

SD: — when the state sentences

anyone to any kind of punishment, or even subjects them to arrest

without a conviction. People assume you’re guilty of something if you’re

even arrested or detained pretrial, as I was. And really, I would argue

that the whole point of why Chevron had this done to me was to try to

criminalize my successful human rights advocacy.

This is not uncommon. A lot of big

companies go after environmental lawyers and activists who do their jobs

effectively to try to make it look like what they’re doing is criminal

when what they’re actually doing is, at least in my case, complying with

the law and trying to save the planet.

SL: I guess I would say, I

think your case is unusual. It’s super unusual, I think. Have we seen

any other human rights or environmental attorneys imprisoned in this

way? I haven’t, for sure.

SD: Oh, no, I mean, my case is

an absolute extreme outlier, there’s no doubt. You’re totally right. But

there are a lot of other cases that are less severe where environmental

activists have been prosecuted. I mean, the protests at Standing Rock

and Line 3 are a great example.

I mean, these people are generally

charged with trespassing, but many of them get locked up for months and

months; indigenous peoples are charged with trespassing on their own

historical ancestral lands to try to block the pipeline.

SL: Yeah.

SD: So there’s all these legal

so-called crimes that can be marshaled by, in that case, public

prosecutors, in my case by a private law firm, that can create a

supposed legal basis to lock people up.

I’d make this point though, which is

that my case is an outlier. But I think the industry, the fossil fuel

industry and the Chevron’s of the world, want it to become the new

normal. And that’s why I think people really need to focus on this and

pay attention. It’s an outlier now, but what happens when it happens

again? Or for a third time or a fourth time? And suddenly you’re like:

Oh, yeah, yeah, private prosecutions, OK, yeah, that happens now. And we

can’t let an outlier — an extreme, I would call it — politically

motivated prosecution of a human rights lawyer in the United States of

America become the new normal, because this case, in my opinion, is a

direct violation of the rule of law.

I mean, who’s ever heard of a private

corporate law firm prosecuting a lawyer who won a civil case against a

big oil company in that private corporate law firm, has the big oil

company as a private client, while it’s prosecuting in the name of the

U.S. government the main critic and the biggest adversary of the oil

company? I mean, that’s not what happens in any rule of law country,

much less the United States of America.

So, look, there’s no doubt Chevron

broke new ground in terms of the tools and weapons it has and the larger

industry has at their disposal, to capture the public machinery of

justice of our criminal justice system and wield it in a way that tries

to silence legitimate advocacy. That’s new. But that’s why it’s so

scary. And I think that’s why, by the way, I’ve gotten so much support

over the last two, three years while I’ve been detained. I mean, it’s

just extraordinary the amount of support we’ve gotten, because people

are really terrified by this. And they understand that this case goes

way, way beyond me personally. It really is a direct assault on the

ability to advocate by all environmental justice advocates, human rights

lawyers who are on the frontlines trying to defend our Earth.

So more and more people get it, and we can’t let this happen again.

RG: And so Sharon, you’ve done

for The Intercept some of the best reporting on this case. For people

who are just tuning into it, can you catch people up on the background

here?

SL: Yeah, thank you. So this

case goes back to 1993, which I guess is what I would call the

beginning, which is when a class action suit was filed in New York

against Texaco over contamination of land in Ecuador that was the home

to farmers and indigenous people, 30,000 people.

So I’m thinking that’s about 30 years

ago that we’re talking about. So this case was moving forward in New

York and was moved to Ecuador at the request of Chevron, actually. And

in 2011, the Ecuadorian court ruled against Chevron ordering it to pay

$18 billion, an award that was later reduced to $9.5 billion.

And this was a massive, huge and

historic win — a real David and Goliath kind of situation. But, that

same year, Chevron filed a RICO suit — a Racketeer Influenced and

Corrupt Organizations suit — against Steven in New York. And the company

had made it clear a couple of years before in a document that we link

in one of my stories, that its long-term strategy was to demonize him.

And you can really see that play out both in the RICO suit and again,

the RICO suit was, I believe that was 2011. So that’s already 11 years

ago, basically that suit — in 2014 the case was decided in federal court

by this federal court judge named Louis Kaplan, who ruled that the

Ecuadorian judgment was invalid because it was obtained through fraud

basically, and that judgment, and I know that’s super complicated, so

stay with me, but that hinged on the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge

named Alberto Guerra, who claimed that Donziger had bribed him in the

original trial.

So it turned out that Guerra was

actually paid by Chevron hundreds of thousands of dollars, and later

admitted to having lied when Steven tried to get that testimony

considered and the court to reconsider that testimony and declined.

And basically, what happened since

then, was a sort of snowballing of decisions made by first Louis Kaplan,

right, that found against Steven. So there’s the RICO suit, and then

following the RICO suit that found that he, based on the testimony of

this judge, had bribed the judge, even though we knew that that witness

was paid by Chevron, and later admitted to lying; everything sort of

hinged on that one decision, including the disbarment of Steven, right?

And we should say that the charges that got him into this situation

where he was on house arrest, and then spent some time in prison on a

contempt of court charge, which is a civil charge, right? He was asked

to hand over his cell phone and computer, something few attorneys have

been asked to do. He said no, because he felt it would not be fair to

his clients, and while this is a kind of strange charge, it is a civil

charge, and I believe a misdemeanor — something that does not usually

land anyone, no one gets arrested for this — in this case, of course, he

was not only arrested, but served as he just said — how many days were

you in on house arrest?

SD: Yeah — 993 days.

SL: Oh my god. So it’s really

an extreme and unusual situation. And obviously an epic ordeal for

Steven, as he’s telling us, but the reason, I think, beyond our concern

for fellow human beings and for activist-attorneys who are working on

behalf of fellow human beings, the reason we all need to worry about

this, is because of the implications for activism and for trying to hold

big oil companies accountable. And obviously, this has been going on

for decades, as we said and when we were first getting the decisions in

this case, between just those 9-10 years, I just feel like so much has

changed in terms of the climate movement, right?

We’re now realizing that in order to

survive, we need to hold accountable these companies and Steven’s case

was like really one of the first where they were being held accountable

for their oil extraction and the very environmental consequences of it.

And they made it super clear that they were gonna fight back. And I feel

like he was made an example of. And I’d love to talk more, and hear him

talk more, about what the example means. In some ways, I think, as he

has pointed out, there is some backlash that basically this can backfire

on them.

But Steven, I worry, this has been, as

you said, incredibly hard for you. And I’m wondering where this leaves

you, financially and your career? Do you have a hope of reversing this

disbarment? I’m curious.

SD: OK. So I think what Sharon

said is really important. And I want to compliment Sharon on her

excellent journalism, generally, and her work on this particular case.

My case, in particular, she was really the first reporter to report

extensively on my detention. And I appreciate The Intercept. I think you

guys do great work.

Look, I feel really good right now.

Chevron tried to silence me. I’m now through what they put on me. And I

feel stronger and more supported than ever. I mean, we have so much

support around the world that we never had before, largely because

Chevron, I think, overreached. And the world stepped up to try to

protect me and protect the Ecuadorians.

I mean, just as an example, there’s 68

Nobel Peace laureates who have demanded my release. There’s 120 human

rights and environmental organizations who have written to President

Biden demanding he pardon me. There’s dozens of bar associations around

the world who demanded my release. So we’re coming out of this, in some

ways, a lot stronger.

Yes, I’ve lost my law license. I hope

to get it back. I’m starting a Substack, by the way, to become my own

kind of journalist. I used to be a journalist. I’m going to be doing a

lot of writing about the Ecuador case, and about the prison experience,

and about other human rights issues around the world that I’m going to

be working on. So I’m really excited about the future.

And I don’t plan anymore to practice

law in a traditional sense. I plan to use my legal skills not to have

clients, but to just be able to analyze the law and advocate more

broadly for victims of human rights abuses. That’s one of the ways I’m

planning on maintaining myself and my family.

SL: Are you still on the hook for legal expenses of Chevron, in this case?

SD: Unclear. Judge Kaplan, as

part of these attacks on me, ordered me to literally pay millions of

dollars to Chevron to reimburse it for legal expenses it used to

persecute me, basically. So, look, there’s some legal issues that are

still out there. This is not over just because I’m out of this detention

situation. But the case is a civil case, not a criminal case. And we’ll

see how it plays out.

SL: I wonder, too, I mean, one

of the big tragedies of all of this is that while we have rallied to

your defense, and I think rightly so, and have been highlighting the

fact that this is a terrible example for other climate activists, the

people of the Amazon and Ecuador have not received a penny, right, from

this company for the destruction of their land? And I’m wondering what

you think the prospects are for any justice to be done for any court,

anywhere, forcing the company to pay the judgment?

SD: Well, I think that the

prospects for forcing Chevron to pay the judgment are significant. I

think that’s one reason why they keep attacking me because they’re so

scared that I will somehow exercise what they believe are my powers of

sorcery to somehow make them pay billions of dollars. I mean, I think

they want to destroy me, because I raised most of the money to finance

the case up to this point.

But, look, there’s other lawyers

working on it now. I’m not going to be leading anything. I’m no longer a

lawyer. We’ll see if the Ecuadorian communities and the rest of their

legal team want to or are able to bring an enforcement action. I really

don’t know how that’s going to play out. I do know that Chevron has a

judgment against it in the courts of Ecuador that’s valid and has been

affirmed by multiple appellate courts, both in Ecuador and Canada. So

they have a real risk there. They’re fighting every step of the way to

try to prevent payment of the money to the people that courts have

determined they poisoned in the Amazon. How that plays out remains to be

seen.

RG: And we’ve reached out to

Chevron multiple times. And Sharon, you’ve gotten a handful of either

statements or statements that they’ve offered elsewhere. They even

created a propaganda outlet, like an entire newspaper, they call The

Amazon Post that is dedicated to — and they don’t really hide that it’s

their propaganda outlet. I have it here, they say at the very top of it,

“Chevron’s views and opinions on the Ecuador lawsuit.” But it’s called

The Amazon Post. And beyond that disclaimer at the top, it looks like a

normal news outlet.

SL: I was obsessed with that.

RG: Right. [Laughs.]

SL: I have to say. That’s what drew me to your story, Steven. I used to go and look at that page. And after reading <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe">Patrick Radden Keefe’s The New Yorker story</a>,

years before, and it just blew me away — I kept thinking the company

has hired people to work on this. And it’s like the massive resources

they were enabled to focus on a single individual, you, is really mind

blowing.

SD: Yeah, it is. I can’t believe it. [Laughs] And didn’t anticipate it.

I mean, they’ve set up two websites

dedicated to what I would argue is the destruction of my reputation.

They have also, on the legal front, used 60 different law firms, 2,000

lawyers, they have six PR firms, designed to control information around

the case and what I and other advocates do.

But that was sort of my point earlier.

I think they’ve sort of lost control of the messaging around the case,

because the truth has caught up with their lives. That’s what I would

argue. The evidence is so strong.

And I also think, Sharon, that locking

me up for almost three years and people who interview me and who know

me, know, that’s not who I am. I don’t commit crimes. I’m a lawyer, OK?

So I think the overreach caused people to be, in my opinion, much, much

more skeptical of Chevron’s claims than otherwise would have been. And I

think the longer my detention lasts, I think the more people are like:

Wait a second, if they’re in a private prosecution locking a lawyer up

who won a big pollution judgment against them, then maybe they really

did do something wrong. Maybe the lawyer’s right, maybe the courts in

Ecuador are right in how they decided the case. So I think it shifted

the perception greatly when they locked me up — in our favor.

SL: Well, how confident are you

that they’re not going to continue to use their vast resources to smear

you and attack you? Because, I mean, even when they’re not with public

opinion, they’re incredibly powerful, right? Just because of the amount

of money they have. So do you think that they’re going to stop going

after you? And, if so, why?

SD: I think they’re gonna keep

on the same path they’ve been on. I mean, I fully expect it. But I just

don’t think it’s going to be that effective. I just don’t. I think

people know too much now. And I think there’s enough people, there’s a

critical mass of people out there, who have access to the information,

outside of the corporate kind of big media companies, like the New York

Times has, for years, ignored this critically important story as an

example, you can hardly see anything on networks.

So baked into my life is that there’s a big oil company willing to spend lots of money to try and mess up my life.

SL: [Laughs.]

SD: [Laughs.] That’s just how I

have to live. And my guess is I’ll have to live that way for the rest

of my life. But you know what? It’s like, good! OK? It means we were

effective. And I want to emphasize that this stuff’s happening, I mean

they’re attacking us, because we were successful and effective, not

because of any other reasons.

So if you’re going to get into this

field of work, and really go toe-to-toe with a big, powerful company

that’s a major polluter in an effort to save our planet, you’re going

probably, if you’re effective, to get hit with some version of what I’m

getting hit with. I think I’m getting hit with a really extreme version,

because of the size of the judgment and just the number of years it’s

lasted.

SL: Well. You have said that you really want Biden to pardon you.

SD: Yep.

SL: And obviously that’s

meaningful to you in some way. And I’m wondering what that would achieve

for you, and, conversely, if he doesn’t do that, what are you stuck

with? I think it’ll be helpful to understand what you’ve been weighed

down with.

SD: Yeah, thank you.

I mean, so look, the reason we’re

asking President Biden to pardon me is because the system failed, the

legal system failed, in this case. And the way it failed is I’m the

first person in American history to be prosecuted by a private

corporation, a private corporate law firm, that had Chevron, in this

case, as one of its clients. And I was the lawyer who beat Chevron in

court over this significant, I would say epic, pollution case. And they

were trying to retaliate against me and deprive me of my liberty. I’m

the only lawyer ever in the U.S. to be held pretrial on a misdemeanor

and I was held for over two years and two months, even though the

longest sentence ever given a lawyer for my offense level prior to my

case was 90 days of home confinement.

So this is clearly retaliation by a corporation. And it’s never been corrected by an appellate court. There’s nowhere to go.

So for the rule of law to be restored

in our country, vis-a-vis what happened to me in this case, the only

option is for President Biden to issue a pardon. That won’t save me from

all the other attacks Chevron’s able to do, by the way. That would just

be a pardon for the criminal conviction on this contempt case where I

was denied a jury, and where I was prosecuted by this private law firm —

and also, by the way, denied the right to put on a real defense by an

evidentiary ruling of the judge. So I think it’s important that the

United States not become a country that locks up its human rights

lawyers, like some other countries around the world do. And I think

President Biden is the only person at this point who can really address

this problem in any kind of fundamental way.

By the way, we’ve asked Attorney

General Garland to deal with it by taking back the prosecution from the

Chevron law firm and prosecuting me directly under the auspices of the

Department of Justice. Look, for a year, I was probably the only lawyer

in U.S. history ever begging the DOJ to prosecute him or her.

SL: [Laughs.] Yeah.

SD: Because it was so

preposterous. I couldn’t deal with this private law firm. They wouldn’t

even negotiate; they wouldn’t talk with any kind of normal prosecutorial

sanity or discretion. I mean, they were just out to harm me as much as

they possibly could, backed by a judge who also was out to harm me. So

the whole system went awry.

So I’m disappointed, by the way, in

Attorney General Garland for not taking back the prosecution. I’m

disappointed in his performance on other issues, like the January 6

so-called insurrection. But the only place left to go now in my case is

President Biden for a pardon.

And by the way, you can go to my website <a href="https://www.freedonziger.com/">freedonziger.com</a>, you can read the letter that 10 lawyers signed, prominent lawyers, to President Biden seeking the pardon for me.

SL: But to be clear, for you,

this is about the precedent and clearing your name? Or would it

materially change anything for you? That’s what I’m curious about.

SD: Well, I think it is about

clearing my name. I think it’s about erasing a conviction that’s a

violation of international law and violation of the Constitution. I

think it would be very powerful on a symbolic level. Look, it’s not

going to give me my two years, and eight months, and two weeks — so it’s

not going to give me back my 32 months and two weeks, OK? That’s gone

forever. But it will restore, I think, some semblance of fairness to the

process. And I think it’ll be symbolically extremely important for

President Biden to step in to address this and correct this problem.

[Musical interlude.]

RG: And I also wanted to give

you a chance to respond to some of Chevron’s claims. They’ve got these

multiple PR firms, they have got different propaganda outlets online.

And if you peruse those, you’ll see the claims that they’re making.

Sharon mentioned the bribery

allegation, which turns out that Chevron actually paid an extraordinary

amount of money to this person, and the person has admitted on the stand

that they had lied.

So setting that key witness aside,

they also make a number of minor claims. They claim that actually all of

the damage to the rainforests was done by Petroecuador, not by Texaco

or Chevron. They say that your team manipulated environmental reports

and submitted them into the Ecuadorian courts. They say that you

blackmailed a judge to get him removed from the case and generally

improperly pressured the courts and the people around the court. So

what’s the response to those various kinds of Chevron allegations?

SD: Yeah, so, look: We did not

do anything wrong. Everything we did was in adherence to the law, and

the rules and customs of the civil justice system in Ecuador. There was

no bribe. First of all, I would never bribe a judge. None of the people

on our team bribed the judge. There’s no evidence there was a bribe

other than a paid Chevron witness who later admitted he lied. So I want

to be very clear about that. These allegations were taken before the

real courts in this case, those in Ecuador, and three appellate courts

including the Supreme Court of the country and the country’s

constitutional court completely rejected these allegations, because

there’s no evidence other than from the mouth of this paid Chevron

witness — his name is Alberto Guerra — who by the way, was coached for

53 straight days by Chevron’s lawyers in the United States before he

took the stand in Judge Kaplan’s court, and came up with this

spectacular allegation against me. He claimed I was in a meeting where

he saw me approve the bribe of a trial judge — never happened. There was

no evidence it happened other than from his mouth. And I’ve rejected it

completely, as have courts all over the place.

They allege a lot of things: We

manipulated environmental reports. I don’t know what they’re talking

about. We worked, as lawyers, with our paid experts to write

environmental reports that we thought accurately reflected the evidence,

the soil and water samples that undeniably, unassailable-y, showed

massive levels of toxic contamination at former Chevron well sites all

over the rainforest. So they call that manipulation? Well, this is how

the law works. Lawyers work with their experts to help them write

reports; they did the same thing with their experts.

Blackmailed the judge? I completely

reject that. [Laughs.] Like, what are they talking about? I mean, it’s

crazy. What they’re alleging is the kinds of things they did constantly.

Like they say we bribed the judge? Actually, no. They say we

manipulated environmental reports? False. We wrote accurate

environmental reports. They were the ones manipulating the environmental

evidence by taking, for example, soil and water samples hundreds of

meters away from the waste pits, and they would turn up no contaminants

and say: Oh! There’s no contaminants at the site. That was manipulation.

And we did not blackmail a judge. They

were constantly intimidating judges, or trying to, and threatening them

with criminal charges, if they didn’t rule in their favor. They

completely tried to delay and sabotage the trial by filing literally

dozens and dozens of duplicative motions in an hour. I mean, there was

crazy stuff happening, and Chevron was the party doing it, not us. So

these allegations are completely false or highly misleading. And I’m

happy to rest on the 220,000 pages of record evidence in the case, the

64,000 chemical sampling results, and the six appellate court decisions

from 28 different appellate judges that affirmed the judgment.

RG: To me, one of the most

mind-boggling charges to hear from a global oil company, was that it was

unfair because you and your team had exerted political influence —

SD: Ha!

RG: — over the judicial process and over the system.

SD: Yeah

RG: It’s like a multinational oil company — Chevron is one of the top five oil companies in the world. Chevron might be top three.

SL: Yeah.

RG: It is one of the most

powerful institutions on the planet. And it is a fact, and you could

talk a little bit about this, you’ve been in this world a lot longer,

and it is a fact that the legal system is also political, and that that

is the case here in the United States, that’s the case in Ecuador, that

is the case all over the world. We’d like to pretend that the judicial

system is entirely divorced from politics, but it’s not. We know that

giant law firms have PR strategies and have political strategies around

cases.

So what kind of political approach did

you take to the case in Ecuador, and do you think that any of it was

over the line? Or was it just: This is how you do a class action suit.

Because class action suits are, in a lot of ways, inherently political.

SD: Well the debate over

whether the law exists kind of in a separate silo free from politics or

subject to politics is something I heard about a lot as a law student,

and since. But, I mean, let’s get real. Every judicial system reflects

the politics of the country within which it exists. And, for example, in

the United States, as corporations I think consolidated their power

tremendously over the last 10-20 years, with the Koch brothers funding

network, and all these sort of trends that are happening with the

Federalist Society now naming judges. The Federalist Society is this

right-wing legal group that my trial judge is a member of and a leader

of, funded by Chevron and a lot of the big corporations in America. I

mean, it’s very clear, there’s been a very concerted effort by the

corporate right to control the federal judiciary in this country, as

well as state judiciaries.

And I think that what happened to me

with this private corporate prosecution would not have happened had this

20-to-30-year effort not been implemented with some degree of success

by these elements in our society. It is preposterous for Chevron to

accuse us of somehow politicizing the case. All we wanted to do was do a

legal case based on evidence. They would, for example, take out

full-page advertisements in the leading Ecuadorian newspapers during the

trial attacking me, or attacking our experts. The websites that Sharon

talked about that are used to defame me today that you can get, The

Amazon Post, I think it’s called, I urge people to go look at it. It’s

crazy. They did that kind of stuff in Ecuador, they do it here, they do

it constantly, not just in this case, but in trying to control what

people think about climate change and about what they do as a company in

terms of clean energy. It’s all very deceptive. And it’s all designed

to impact how the law operates and how judges rule based on political

pressure.

I mean, they’re trying to generate

pressure to win cases through manipulation or abuse, that I don’t think

they could ever win fairly on the merits of the actual claim. So they do

that constantly. I saw it with my own eyes, in this case in Ecuador and

since. And I observe this industry pretty closely because of the work I

do. And you see this all the time.

So the idea that a human rights

lawyer, for example, would talk to Sharon Lerner or talk to the press,

or invite a documentary filmmaker to record the litigation — for them to

try to argue that that was somehow inappropriate when they do those

exact same things at a much, much higher and more effective level, I

think is obviously hypocritical, insincere, and inaccurate.

SL: And let me just jump in

about where Chevron ranks. So they’re second to Saudi Aramco in terms of

the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted in the modern era.

SD: Wow. Yeah.

SL: So — yes.

SD: I’ll say this: People are

obviously watching the war in Ukraine. Few people know that Chevron is

literally the only large American company still doing business in Russia

during this war. They’re partnering with Putin’s government on a huge

gas pipeline that generates literally hundreds of millions of dollars a

day in revenue for Russia, for the government, and for Putin to fund his

army that is committing all sorts of atrocities in Ukraine. So Chevron

is a company that turned its back on the Indigenous peoples of Ecuador

whom it poisoned and to whom it owes money. They don’t pay; they leave

these vulnerable communities holding the cleanup bill for harm that

Chevron caused. And then they go over to Russia and they’re in business

with Putin.

I mean, there’s no end it seems, no

floor, to what I would argue is the moral bankruptcy of this particular

company. But, of course, it’s an industry wide problem. I mean, it’s all

about the money. And it’s very clear that our governmental institutions

have been so seriously weakened by corporate money, that they’re

incapable of actually standing up to this kind of abuse. I mean, that’s

what I experienced again, in my private criminal prosecution.

SL: I definitely see how

there’s a way in which this has really backfired for Chevron. And we’ve

seen Chris Smalls and all these amazing activists kind of stream through

your apartment while you’ve been stuck there. People are sort of going

to pay tribute and it’s been this amazing thing to watch on your

Instagram, right? All the people, the activists, who are recognizing

what you’ve been through and pulling together. And I find that really

inspiring and encouraging.

And on the other hand, the people of

Ecuador who you were representing, again, have not received any of the

money that they were supposed to get, the environmental mess is still

there. And you have emerged on the other side of this, but you don’t

have your law license and you can’t go defend them. And I hesitate to

couch this all in terms of winners and losers. But [laughs] I worry

about the upshot of all you’ve been through. I just think that there are

a lot of lessons to be learned from this, and some of them are

positive, and some of them are pretty scary.

SD: I share your concern. This is not all good for me. Look, it’s bad!

SL: Yeah!

SD: I mean, what I’m really

trying to convey is I got strengthened through the process of their

persecution of me to the point where we’re in a much higher place right

now, where I think they actually face more risk now than they did three

years ago. But it doesn’t mean that they’re going to pay the Ecuador

judgment by any means. It’s unclear how all of this is going to play

out.

I think the big loss is for our

society. I mean, there was a private corporate criminal prosecution that

deprived a human rights lawyer of his liberty for almost three years

based on a civil discovery order in a civil case. It’s never happened

before. And I think that’s what people really need to focus on.

I mean, I’m confident enough in the

support I have, in my resilience to really feel like I will get through

whatever they try to throw at me from this point forward. It doesn’t

mean I’ll have my old life back, because I have to deal with all sorts

of issues and sort of byproduct of what I had to endure the last few

years, but, I’m OK. My family’s OK.

I think the real question is: Where

are we in the United States of America in terms of corporate control of

our judiciary and of our governmental institutions? Because we really

should not be living in a society where an oil company can directly

prosecute its main adversary and deprive him of his liberty without the

U.S. government being involved. That’s wrong. And that’s why I think

President Biden, Attorney General Garland, the Congress — where are our

leaders? I mean, I know people are busy with lots of obviously

critically important issues other than the Ecuador case, and other than

Chevron and Steve Donziger, I get it. [Laughs.] But this is a new kind

of animal that our criminal justice system has never seen before in

terms of the amount of corporate control and allowing someone’s liberty

to be taken away, essentially, by a corporate adversary.

So I am hopeful, Sharon, that at least

on that issue, enough attention can be drawn to this so that it never

happens again to anyone else. At least that’s my hope.

SL: I would also say: You’re

right that this is a government story, it’s a judiciary story, it is a

climate story. And I think you’re right that it’s also a media story.

When I went to see you in January 2020, you had already been on house

arrest for a couple of months, and no one had written about it.

SD: I had been on house arrest for five months.

SL: Right!

SD: I got arrested — or put on

house arrest August 6, 2019. You came in January of the next year. And

by the way, like, I couldn’t believe it lasted seven months. And if you

had told me then it was going to last 32 months, I’d be like: There’s no

way!

SL: [Laughs.] But it’s also —

SD: So, yes. This has been a story ignored by the mainstream media. Totally. I mean, they don’t know how to deal with it.

SL: And even after that. So

after that story, quite a number of publications, I think we can call

them lefty publications, have written about this. But I think you’re

right, that there’s been a real silence. And I think I know why. You get

calls from the attorneys, who scare the bejesus out of editors.

SD: I focus on my own social

media; I focus on truly independent outlets like The Intercept, The

Nation, and others. And just, we work with what we have. And we have

been successful in getting our narrative out there and getting the facts

as we see them out there. But I think it’s deeply disappointing that a

human rights lawyer was locked up for five months, there were no stories

at all, and since you really opened the floodgates — once you wrote, by

the way, a lot of other independent outlets started to write. But we

still haven’t been able to penetrate the large media companies.

RG: And let me take this

opportunity to make a plug, not just for The Intercept but for the

independent media sphere. Like if you, as a listener, watch any YouTube

shows, you listen to independent podcasts, you read independent websites

— become a member. Support that independent media because it’s valuable

in a system where the other piece of it is so tightly connected to

corporate America, that you can have just absolutely extraordinary

stories that go uncovered because of the fear of the consequences of

covering them. And so that’s a plug, not just for The Intercept, but for

all independent media.

And also, Steven, what was it again, <a href="https://stevendonziger.substack.com/">stevendonziger.substack.com</a>? Is that your newsletter?

SD: Yeah. So I had my first

post and launched it last week. I’m going to be writing every week about

all sorts of issues related to the criminal justice system. Years ago, I

edited a book called “The Real War on Crime.” I used to be a criminal

defense lawyer. I just spent 45 days in the belly of the beast in

federal prison, and several more months dealing with this home

confinement craziness, where I get calls by this for-profit company at

all hours of the day and night. So I’m going to be writing about a lot

of human rights issues, criminal justice issues, and of course, Chevron

and some of the oil industry and climate issues.

And, again, it’s

stevendonziger.substack.com. I hope people subscribe, and get interested

in some of this material. I’m really no different than The Intercept,

just as a person, in the sense that I feel like it’s very hard to create

platforms where truly independent reporting and commentary can actually

take place. The Intercept is a relatively new institution in our world,

but it’s so important. I get so much of my information from y’alls

outlet, and I salute all of y’all for what you do — and others as well.

The media landscape has changed.

I mean, look, had this happened 25

years ago and The New York Times decided not to cover me, like, I don’t

think anyone would have known about this.

RG: Mhmm.

SD: Where would you have gone

back then? And now the reality is the story is out. When they arrested

me back in 2019, I think I had about 1,000 Twitter followers. And now I

have 180,000. Like there’s people very engaged in this story all over

the world. By the way, if people want to follow me it’s @sdonziger.

Sorry to keep plugging myself! But I hope you understand why I do that —

RG: I do.

SD: — because it’s the only way I can get support.

So we’re just in a completely

different environment where you don’t as much need these big media

outlets to get the truth out, like you did years ago. So I’m trying to

take full advantage of that. And like even being on this podcast, having

The Intercept write about this on a regular basis. You guys read

another story about Sen. Gillibrand’s relationship to Chevron and

Chevron lawyers. There’s so much interesting reporting going on over

there. So I’m just appreciative and I don’t know what to say.

And by the way, I recognize that some

of this case is a little complicated. But, to me, it’s real simple. I

mean, the Indigenous peoples were poisoned by Chevron, they won a legal

case, Chevron’s now trying to destroy the legal case by destroying their

lawyer. And if you want to read more about it, you know, on our

website, freedonziger.com, there’s a bunch of articles, including from

The Intercept, where people can get a lot more background information

than we have time to delve into now in this podcast.

RG: Thanks for taking some time

out of your first day of freedom. And I hope you enjoy the rest of it.

And thank you, Sharon, for joining me as well.===</div><div><a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-biggest-climate-trial-of-the-year-was-a-chevron-fue-1846920362">https://gizmodo.com/the-biggest-climate-trial-of-the-year-was-a-chevron-fue-1846920362</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>the Biggest Climate Trial of the Year Was a Chevron-Fueled ‘Charade’</div><div>By Dharna Noor</div><div>5/19/21 </div><div>
</div><div>[Attorney

Steven Donziger arrives for a court appearance at Daniel Patrick

Moynihan United States Courthouse in Manhattan on May 10, 2021 in New

York City.</div><div>Photo: Michael M. Santiago (Getty Images)]</div><div>
</div><div>After

a week of proceedings, the criminal trial for attorney Steven

Donziger—who won a multibillion-dollar case against Chevron over

pollution in the Amazon rainforest—wrapped up on Monday. In his

estimation, the trial was a “charade.” And yet he was relatively pleased

with the outcome.</div><div>
</div><div>“Given that we stood no chance to win the actual trial, the proceeding could not be better for us,” he said.</div><div>
</div><div>Donziger

led a case against Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people and

peasant farmers from the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 2013, he won a $9.5

billion judgment against the energy giant, marking the largest human

rights and environmental court judgment in history. Chevron refused

to pay and instead put all its energy into going after Donziger in court

in what is one of the most outlandish cases to wend its way through the

courts in recent memory. Donziger has been under house arrest for going

on 22 months, a judge with an industry-friendly record has been

handpicked to preside over the proceedings, and the prosecuting lawyer

worked until recently at a private law firm with ties to Chevron.</div><div>
</div><div>The

trial, which began on May 10, focused on misdemeanor charges of

criminal contempt against Donziger for disobeying court orders, the

charge that landed him in home detention. Specifically, Donziger refused

to hand over his laptop, cell phone, and other electronic devices when

the court ordered him to so back in 2019. He said doing so would violate

his legal clients’ privacy.</div><div>
</div><div>If found guilty, Donziger could face up to six months of prison time. He and his lawyers have no doubt he’ll be convicted.</div><div>“No

justice will be done here,” Martin Garbus, an attorney representing

Donziger, said in the courtroom on the first day of the trial.</div><div>
</div><div>The

criminal charges against Donziger are unusual, as they were brought by a

private prosecutor, Rita Glavin, who until March was a partner at the

law firm Seward and Kissel. Last

year, Seward and Kissel admitted that they’d represented Chevron as a

client as recently as 2018, confirming Donziger’s lawyer’s suspicions

and posing a glaring conflict of interest. U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan,

who presided over a 2012 RICO case against Donziger, appointed Glavin

to bring the charges after public prosecutors refused to do so, a move

previously unheard of in the American judiciary.</div><div>
</div><div>The contempt trial was overseen by Loretta Preska, the same federal judge who placed Donziger on house arrest in 2019. She was also selected to oversee the criminal case by Kaplan. Handpicking a judge for a case went against the standard process of random assignment that

the court normally uses, and Preska’s role an advisor to the

pro-business Federalist Society and documented history of ruling in

favor of energy companies has raised concerns for Donziger’s supporters.</div><div>
</div><div>Paul

Paz y Miño, the associate director of Amazon Watch, said that Preska

has applied the rules of the court selectively. She invoked them last

month in her decision to disallow the criminal trial to be broadcast on

Zoom despite clear public interest. Then as the trial was beginning, Paz

y Miño said, she invoked court rules when Donziger’s supporters wanted

to sit in the part of court designated for journalists.</div><div>
</div><div>“She

said the Southern District doesn’t allow people who aren’t press in the

press area,” he said. “But she had no problem ignoring the rules when

the case was assigned to her by Kaplan. ... The hypocrisy is full on

display.”</div><div>
</div><div>Paz

y Miño said Preska’s biases only became more clear as the proceedings

began. From the first day, she said that she was not interested in

hearing from Donziger’s lawyers about why he refused to turn over his

laptop and cell phone—namely that doing so would violate attorney-client

privileges. A judge for a related trial ruled that the sanctions Kaplan

placed on Donziger were not clear and should be overturned in March,

but put Preska deemed all of that irrelevant.</div><div>
</div><div>“She said he was given an order by a federal judge, he didn’t comply, he’s held in contempt. She pretty much said everything short of ‘you’re guilty’ on the first day of the trial,” Paz y Miño said.</div><div>
</div><div>As

the trial continued, Paz y Miño said Preska continued to conduct

herself unfairly. He said she only sustained one of Donziger’s team’s

objections to the proceedings, whereas she upheld all but one of the

prosecution’s.</div><div>
</div><div>Kaplan’s

role in the trial also made supporters raise their eyebrows. It’s

Kaplan’s orders Donziger is being accused of disobeying, so he is the

aggrieved party. Despite this, he chose the judge to preside over the

case. Further, he has not recused himself from the case, so he could

still be in communication with Glavin, the private lawyer prosecuting

Donziger.</div><div>
</div><div>Donziger’s team believed

the trial was so clearly unfair that they spent just 10 minutes on

defense arguments on Monday. Donziger himself didn’t even testify in

court.</div><div>
</div><div>“I just was advised by my lawyers

that it would not be a good idea, and as I thought it through, it just

didn’t make sense,” he said at a press conference. “It wouldn’t have

moved the needle.”</div><div>
</div><div>Closing arguments will be

submitted in writing in two weeks, and a decision is expected sometime

after that. Though Donziger has no question he’ll be convicted, he said

the trial could actually help him construct a solid appeal if and when

he is convicted because it so clearly demonstrated the reasons that the

case was unfairly biased and should be thrown out.</div><div>
</div><div>“This

trial had already been decided and the purpose of the proceeding was to

try to glom on a veneer of due process over a decision that I think was

made behind closed doors by judges,” he said, noting the circumstances

“seriously strengthen our appeal.”</div><div>
</div><div>Support

for his plight is also building elsewhere. Last month, U.S.

representatives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Cori

Bush, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to

review the case. Whatever the verdict, it almost certainly won’t be the end of the case.</div></div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div><div>=</div><div> EMAIL 4/11/22</div><div>...Even

though my release date is nearing, I cannot rest easy. The reality is

that my family and I are still living on pins and needles. Recently, I

received a call in the middle of the night from the halfway house at

2:15 a.m. When that phone rings, I shudder: I never know if the voice

will say “pack your bags and get here immediately, per directive of the

Bureau of Prisons.” That’s what happened in early February and I ended

up locked up for 5 days in the halfway house in the Bronx. If I had not awakened the other night, the Bureau of Prisons could have put me on “escape” status and had federal marshals handcuff me in my home and take me back to prison.</div><div>While

the peril from these attacks will not completely recede, we are

optimistic as we get closer to April 25. Here are the key takeaways: First, we must have the legal firepower to neutralize the continued harassment by Chevron after my sentence ends. It

is even possible Judge Kaplan will try to charge me with the same

“contempt” over my ongoing protection of the confidential information of

my clients on my computer cell phone. I

am going to need even more legal protection in the coming months to

deal with these attacks – independent of the legal team needed to help

the Indigenous peoples of Ecuador force Chevron to comply with the $9.5

billion pollution judgment (affirmed by six appellate courts) so they

can finally clean up their ancestral lands. Second, several high-profile artists are planning a major “homecoming” to Ecuador’s Amazon this summer to celebrate my release. The objective will be to put the focus back where it should be: on

the Indigenous peoples being poisoned by Chevron’s despicable acts of

pollution, rather than on me and the lawyers the company is attacking. This

trip will be a major pivot point but it will take significant

resources. (For those who might want to participate, please let me

know).  Third, we are continuing our multi-pronged exoneration strategy to erase my contempt “conviction” by Judge Preska. This

includes an international campaign to convince President Biden to

pardon me, now backed by 120 human rights and environmental groups

(including Amnesty International);

our legal work to reverse my conviction in U.S. appellate courts; and

our campaign to implement the favorable decision of the United Nations

that found my detention to be arbitrary and in violation of

international law. You know what’s really crazy? Not only am I the only lawyer

in U.S. history detained for a misdemeanor contempt charge, I am also

the only person ever convicted of a misdemeanor forced to serve his

entire sentence before the appellate court rules on whether the

conviction was legal. That’s

one reason why the U.N. concluded my case reflected a “staggering” and

“appalling” level of judicial bias by U.S. judges Kaplan and Preska.</div><div>
</div><div></div></div><div>
</div><div><div>===</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/capital/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/capital/</a></div><div>
</div><div>Judge Loretta Preska,

an advisor to the conservative Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a

major donor, sentenced human rights attorney and Chevron nemesis Steven

Donziger to six months in prison Friday for misdemeanor contempt of

court after he had already spent 787 days under house arrest in New

York.<a href="https://scheerpost.com/2021/10/06/the-anonymous-executioners-of-the-corporate-state/" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">This article originally appeared on ScheerPost.</a>]
Preska's

caustic outbursts — she said at the sentencing, "It seems that only the

proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect

for the law" — capped a judicial farce worthy of the antics of

Vasiliy Vasilievich, the presiding judge at the major show trials of the

Great Purges in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi judge Roland Freisler

who once shouted at a defendant,"You really are a lousy piece of trash!"Donziger,

a graduate of Harvard Law School, has been fighting against polluting

American oil companies for nearly three decades on behalf of indigenous

communities and peasant farmers in Ecuador. His only "crime"

was winning a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011 against Chevron for

thousands of plaintiffs. The oil giant had bought Texaco oil company

holdings in Ecuador, inheriting a lawsuit alleging it deliberately

discharged 16 billion gallons of toxic waste from its oil sites into

rivers, groundwater, and farmland. Since the verdict, Chevron has come

after him, weaponizing litigation to destroy him economically,

professionally, and personally.The sentencing came a day after Donziger petitioned the court to consider an <a href="https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/klvykgralvg/show_temp%2520(17).pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">opinion</a> by the United Nations human rights council that found his house arrest a violation of international human rights law. The

U.N human rights council said his house arrest counted as detention

under international law and it was therefore illegal for Judge Preska to

demand an additional six months in jail. Amnesty International also

called for Donziger's immediate release.Donziger

and his lawyers have two weeks to appeal the judge's order that

Donziger be sent immediately to jail. Preska denied Donziger bail

claiming he is a flight risk. If the Federal Court of Appeals turns down

Donziger's appeal he will go to jail for six months. The irony, not

lost on Donziger and his lawyers, is that the higher court may overturn

Preska's ruling against him, but by the time that decision is made he

will potentially have already spent six months in jail."What

Judge Preska is trying to do is force me to serve the entirety of my

sentence before the appellate court can rule," Donziger told me by phone

on Monday. "If the appellate court rules in my favor, I will still have

served my sentence, although I am innocent in the eyes of the law."Donziger,

his lawyers have pointed out, is the first person under U.S. law

charged with a "B" misdemeanor to be placed on home confinement, prior

to trial, with an ankle monitor. He is the first person charged with any

misdemeanor to be held under home confinement for over two years. He is

the first attorney ever to be charged with criminal contempt over a

discovery dispute in a civil case where the attorney went into voluntary

contempt to pursue an appeal. He is the first person to be

prosecuted under Rule 42 (criminal contempt) by a private prosecutor

with financial ties to the entity and industry that was a litigant in the underlying civil dispute that gave rise to the orders. He is the first person tried by a private prosecutor who had ex parte communications with the charging judge while that judge remained (and remains) unrecused on the criminal case."No

lawyer in New York for my level of offense ever has served more than 90

days and that was in home confinement," Donziger told the court. "I

have now been in home confinement eight times that period of time. I

have been disbarred without a hearing where I have been unable to

present factual evidence; thus, I am unable to earn an income in my

profession. I have no passport. I can't travel; can't do human rights

work the normal way which I believe I am reasonably good at; can't see

my clients in Ecuador; can't visit the affected communities to hear the

latest news of cancer deaths or struggles to maintain life in face of

constant exposure to oil pollution. In addition, and this is little known, Judge [Lewis A.] Kaplan has imposed millions and millions of dollars of fines and courts costs on me. [Kaplan

is the judge for Chevron's lawsuit against Donziger; Preska is his

handpicked judge for the contempt charges.] He has ordered me to pay

millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then

he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life's savings

because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has

a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in

legal fees. That's where things stand today. I ask you humbly: might

that be enough punishment already for a Class B misdemeanor?"Judge Preska was unmoved."Mr.

Donziger has spent the last seven years thumbing his nose at the U.S.

judicial system," Preska said at his sentencing hearing. "Now it's time

to pay the piper."The six-month sentence was the maximum the judge was allowed to impose; she

ruled that his house arrest cannot be counted as part of his detention.

From start to finish, this has been a burlesque. It is emblematic of a

court system that has been turned over to lackies of corporate power,

who use the veneer of jurisprudence, decorum, and civility to make a

mockery of the rule of law.When

the law is neutered, judges become the enforcers of injustice. These

corporate judges, who epitomize what Hannah Arendt called the banality

of evil, now routinely make war on workers, civil liberties, unions, and

environmental regulations.Preska sent Jeremy Hammond to prison for a decade for hacking into the computers of a private security firm that

works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland

Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical. In 2011, Hammond

released to the website WikiLeaks and Rolling Stone and other

publications some three million emails from the Texas-based company

Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The sentence was one of the

longest in U.S. history for hacking and the maximum Preska could impose

under a plea agreement in the case. I sat through the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joRl9r_cC2U" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Hammond trial</a>. I watched Preska spew her bile and contempt at <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/feeding-the-flame-of-revolt/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Hammond</a> from the bench with the same vitriol she used to attack Donziger.Preska is also infamous for her long judicial crusade to force New York public schools to provide tax-subsidized free space for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/06/loretta-preska-judicial-crusade-establish-churches-schools" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">evangelical churches</a> based on blatantly illogical readings of the Constitution.The

persecution of Donziger fits a pattern familiar to millions of poor

Americans who are coerced into accepting plea deals, many for crimes

they did not commit, and sent to prison for decades. It fits the pattern

of the judicial lynching and prolonged psychological torture of Julian

Assange and Chelsea Manning. It fits the pattern of those denied habeas

corpus and due process at Guantánamo Bay or in CIA black sites. It fits

the pattern of those charged under terrorism laws, many held at the

federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan, who

cannot see the evidence used to indict them. It fits the pattern of the widespread use of Special

Administrative Measures, known as SAMs, imposed to prevent or severely

restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the

media, and people outside the jail. It fits the pattern of the extreme

sensory deprivation and prolonged isolation used on those in our black

sites and prisons, a form of psychological torture, the refinement

of torture as science. By the time a "terrorist" is dragged into our

secretive courts the bewildered suspect no longer has the mental and

psychological capability to defend themselves. If they can do this

legally to the demonized they can, and one day will, do it to the rest

of us. The Donziger case is an ominous warning that the American legal

system is broken.Ralph

Nader, who graduated from Harvard Law School, has long decried the

capture of the courts and law schools by corporate power, calling the

nation's attorneys and judges "lucrative cogs in the corporate wheel."

He notes that law school curriculums are "built around corporate law,

and corporate power, and corporate perpetration, and corporate defense."Victor

Klemperer, who was dismissed from his post as a professor of Romance

languages at the University of Dresden in 1935 because of his Jewish

ancestry, astutely noted how at first the Nazis "changed the values,

the frequency of words, [and] made them into common property, words that

had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They

confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and

sentence forms with their poison. They made language serve their

terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools [Werebemittle], at once the most public and most secret." And, Klemperer noted, as the redefinition of old concepts took place the public was oblivious.This

redefinition of words and concepts has, as Klemperer witnessed during

the rise of fascism, allowed the courts to twist the law into an

instrument of injustice, revoking our rights by judicial fiat. It has

seen the courts permit unlimited dark money into political campaigns

under <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/a-decade-under-citizens-united" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Citizens United</a>,

defending our money-saturated elections as the right to petition the

government and a form of free speech. The courts have revoked our right

to privacy and legalized wholesale government surveillance in the name

of national security. The courts grant corporations the rights of

individuals, while rarely holding the individuals who run the

corporations accountable for corporate crimes.Very

few of the legal rulings that benefit corporate power have popular

support. The corporate disemboweling of the country, therefore, is

increasingly given cover by Christian fascists, who energize their base

around abortion, prayer in schools, guns and breaking down the

separation of church and state. These issues are rarely addressed in

cases before federal courts. But they distract the base from the slew of

pro-corporate rulings that dominate most court dockets.Corporations

such as Tyson Foods, Purdue, Walmart, and Sam's Warehouse have poured

millions into institutions that indoctrinate these Christian fascists,

including Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. They fund the

Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which

campaigned for Amy Coney Barrett's appointment to the Supreme Court.

Barrett opposes abortion and belongs to People of Praise, a far-right

Catholic cult that practices "speaking in tongues." She and the other

far-right ideologues are hostile to LGBTQ rights. But this is not why

she is so beloved by corporations, who are not interested in abortion,

LGBTQ equality or gun rights.Barrett

and the Christian fascists embrace an ideology that believes that God

will take care of the righteous. Those who are poor, those who are sick,

those who go to prison, those who are unemployed, those who cannot

succeed in society do so because they have failed to please God. In this worldview there is no need for unions, universal health care, a social safety net or prison reform. Barrett <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/supreme-court-pick-trump-amy-coney-barrett-gig-economy-workers" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">has ruled consistently in favor of corporations</a> to

cheat gig workers out of overtime, green-light fossil fuel extraction

and pollution and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud.

The watchdog group <a href="https://www.accountable.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020-09-28-Amy-Coney-Barrett-Sides-With-Corporations-76-of-the-Time.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Accountable.US</a> found that as a circuit court judge, Barrett

"faced at least 55 cases in which citizens took on corporate entities

in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the

corporations."The

Christian fascists, allied with organizations such as the Federalist

Society, under the Trump administration gave lifetime appointments to

nearly 200 judges, roughly 23 percent of all federal judgeships. That

included 53 to the nation's appellate courts, the court immediately under the Supreme Court.

The American Bar Association, the country's largest nonpartisan

coalition of lawyers, has rated many of these appointments as

unqualified. There are currently six Federalist Society Supreme Court

justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett

Kavanaugh, who Nader calls "a corporation masquerading as a human

being." Two

Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and the late

Antonin Scalia, who was an original faculty advisor to the organization

founded by conservative law students in 1982, were supported in the

nomination process by Joe Biden.The

stacking of the courts with corporate puppets, however, began long

before Trump. It was carried out by both Republican and Democratic

administrations. Preska was appointed by Republican President G.W. Bush.

However, the judge who preceded Preska in the Donziger case, Judge

Lewis A. Kaplan, a former lawyer for the tobacco industry who had

undisclosed investments in funds with <a href="https://amazonwatch.org/news/2014/1029-judge-kaplan-held-investments-in-chevron-when-he-ruled-for-company" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Chevron holdings</a>, according to his public financial disclosure statement, was appointed by Democratic President Clinton.The targeting of the courts was one of the key goals of <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Lewis Powell</a>, a corporate lawyer later

elevated to the Supreme Court by President Nixon. In Powell's 1971 memo

to the Chamber of Commerce, a blueprint for the slow-motion corporate

coup that has taken place, he called on business interests to pack the judiciary with corporate-friendly judges.The

courts in all tyrannies are dominated by mediocrities and buffoons.

They make up for their intellectual and moral vacuity with a zealous

subservience to power. They turn courtroom trials into opera buffa,

at least until the victim is shackled and pushed out the door to a

prison cell. They fulminate in caustic tirades at the condemned, whose

sentence is never in doubt and whose guilt is never in question."It

started when Texaco went into Ecuador in the Amazon in the 1960s and

cut a sweetheart deal with the military government then ruling Ecuador,"

Donziger told me for <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2020/08/25/how-corporate-tyranny-works/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a column</a> I

wrote about his case a year ago. "Over the next 25 years, Texaco was

the exclusive operator of a very large area of the Amazon that had

several oil fields within this area, 1500 square miles. They drilled

hundreds of wells. They created thousands of open-air, unlined toxic

waste pits where they dumped the heavy metals and toxins that came up

from the ground when they drilled. They ran pipes from the pits into

rivers and streams that local people relied on for their drinking water,

their fishing, and their sustenance. They poisoned this pristine

ecosystem, in which lived five indigenous peoples, as well as a lot of

other nonindigenous rural communities. There was a mass industrial

poisoning.""The

verdict came down, about $18 billion in favor of the affected

communities, which is what it would take at a minimum to clean up the

actual damage and compensate the people for some of their injuries,"

Donziger told me. "That eventually got reduced on appeal in Ecuador to

$9.5 billion, but it was affirmed by three appellate courts, including

the highest court of Ecuador. It was <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/ecuadorians-can-sue-chevron-in-canada-supreme-court-rules/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">affirmed by the Canadian Supreme Court</a>, where the Ecuadorians went to enforce their judgment in a unanimous opinion in 2015."Chevron

promptly sold its assets and left Ecuador. It refused to pay the fees

to clean up its environmental damage. It invested an estimated $2

million to destroy Danziger. Chevron sued him, using a civil courts

portion of the federal law famous for breaking the New York Mafia in the

1970s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO Act. Chevron,

which has more than $260 billion in assets, hired an estimated 2,000

lawyers from 60 law firms to carry out its campaign, according to court

documents. But the oil giant, which did not want a jury to hear the

case, dropped its demand for financial damages, which would have allowed

Donziger to request a jury trial. This allowed Judge Kaplan to decide

the RICO case against Donziger alone. He found credible a witness named

Alberto Guerra, an Ecuadorian judge, relocated to the US by Chevron at a

cost of some $2 million, who claimed the verdict in Ecuador was the

product of a bribe. Kaplan used Guerra's testimony as primary evidence

for the racketeering charge, although Guerra, a former judge, later

admitted to an international tribunal that he had <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neye7z/chevrons-star-witness-admits-to-lying-in-the-amazon-pollution-case" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">falsified his testimony</a>.John Keker of San Francisco, one of Donziger's lawyers on that case, said he was up against <a href="https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lawyer-blasted-by-judge-for-conduct-in-chevron-case-should-get-his-law-license-back-ethics-referee-says" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">160 lawyers for Chevron</a> and

during the trial he felt "like a goat tethered to a stake." He called

the court proceedings under Kaplan "a Dickensian farce" and a "show

trial."In

the end, Kaplan ruled that the judgment in the Ecuadorean court against

Chevron was the result of fraud. He also ordered Donziger to turn over

decades of all client communication to Chevron, in effect eradicating

attorney-client privilege, a backbone of the Anglo-American legal system

with roots dating to ancient Rome. Donziger appealed what was,

according to legal experts following the case, an unprecedented and

illegal order. While Donziger's appeal was pending, Kaplan charged him

with misdemeanor criminal contempt for this principled stance — carrying

a maximum sentence of six months — as well as his refusal to turn over

his passport, his personal electronics and to refrain from seeking the

collection of the original award against Chevron. When the U.S.

attorney's office declined for five years to prosecute his criminal

contempt charges against the environmental lawyer, Kaplan, using an exceedingly rare judicial maneuver, <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/when-feds-demur-judge-charges-ecuador-crusader-himself/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">appointed the private law firm of Seward & Kissel</a>, to act in the name of the government to prosecute Donziger. Neither the judge nor the law firm disclosed <a href="https://prospect.org/power/chevron-big-oil-power-prosecute-its-biggest-critic/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">that Chevron has been a client of Seward & Kissel</a>.Kaplan

also violated the established random case assignment protocol to

personally assign Preska, who had served on an advisory board of the

Federalist Society, a group to which Chevron has been a lavish <a href="https://www.commoncause.org/democracy-wire/justice-thomas-crosses-the-line-again/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">donor</a>, to hear the case.

Kaplan had Preska demand Donziger post an $800,000 bond on the

misdemeanor charge. Preska placed him under house arrest and confiscated

his passport, which he has used to meet with attorneys around the world

attempting to enforce the judgment against Chevron. Kaplan managed to have Donziger disbarred. He

allowed Chevron to freeze Donziger's bank accounts, slapped Donziger

with millions in fines without allowing him a jury, forced him to wear

an ankle monitor 24 hours a day and effectively shut down his ability to

earn a living. Kaplan allowed Chevron to impose a lien on Donziger's

apartment in Manhattan where he lives with his wife and teenage son.None

of this would surprise those targeted by the tyrannies of the past.

What would be surprising, perhaps, to many Americans is how advanced our

own corporate tyranny has become. Donziger never stood a chance.

Neither does Julian Assange. These judges are not, in the end, focused

on Donziger or Assange, but on us. The show trials they preside over are

meant to be transparently biased. They are designed to send a message.

All who defy corporate power and the national security state will be

lynched. There will be no reprieve because there is no justice.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">rudy pal mastro, she was assigned case by pal louis hon vs law random assign</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">read paper during trial, all objections but one denied; only one question, did you disobey kaplan order?</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">aoc etc ltr but no action by AG garland</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/a-rude-awakening-june-4-2021/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://kpfa.org/episode/a-rude-awakening-june-4-2021/</a></div></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">===</div><div style="font-size: small; 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; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/steven-donziger-chevron/</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. It 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 Amazon Watch, described it as “the most important corporate accountability case in history.”</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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?”</div><div>
</div><div>Chevron’s legal onslaught succeeded largely because of a single federal judge in New York named Lewis A. Kaplan. 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. When

the prosecutors declined, Kaplan appointed private attorneys to

prosecute Donziger—a nearly unprecedented step by a federal judge.</div><div>
</div><div>Judge

Lewis Kaplan took the nearly unprecedented step of appointing private

attorneys to prosecute Donziger. (Courtesy of Richard Baker / University

of Rochester)</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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. “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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>Five peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown an increased incidence of cancer and other health risks in the area. (Chevron funded its own peer-reviewed study, which claimed to find no such cancer risk.)</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.)</div><div>
</div><div>RELATED ARTICLE</div><div>The Nation</div><div>ECUADOR’S BATTLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AGAINST CHEVRON</div><div>James North</div><div>
</div><div>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. The company invoked the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 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. 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. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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—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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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. The oil giant acknowledged paying Guerra and moving him and his family to a secret location in the United States. In all, Donziger estimated that Chevron has spent $2 million on the ex-judge.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>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)</div><div>
</div><div>Chevron’s lawyers rehearsed Guerra’s testimony with him 53 times and then put him on the stand in front of Kaplan. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Chevron’s legal offensive is an example of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP, suit.

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. The oil giant presumably also has a related aim: to prevent the plaintiffs from ever collecting their cleanup money. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Sean

Comey, Chevron’s senior adviser on corporate issues, litigation, and

financial communications, declined to comment for this article. 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?</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Show

of hands: Protesters in New York City, some with symbolically

oil-stained hands, demonstrate against Chevron in 2013. (Spencer Platt /

Getty Images)</div><div>
</div><div>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 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, 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.</div><div>
</div><div>Yanza told me that cancer continues to afflict people in the rain forest.

“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Luis

Yanza, the elected leader of the Amazon Defense Coalition, speaks at a

protest against Chevron in 2008. (AP Photo / Paul Sakuma)</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.) 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 Rex Weyler, a founder of Greenpeace; Roger Waters of the

rock band Pink Floyd; and Simon Taylor, one of the directors of Global

Witness, the influential international anti-corruption organization. On February 24, Horan found in Donziger’s favor and recommended that his law license be restored. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Steven

Donziger addresses a press conference in Ecuador in 2014. Today he’s

under house arrest. (Rodrigo Buendia / AFP via Getty Images)</div><div>
</div><div>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. 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Donziger’s trial isn’t scheduled to begin until June 15. 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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.” 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 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.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>James North has reported from Africa, Latin America, and Asia for four decades. He lives in New York City.</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/">https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div data-reactid="219" style="box-sizing: border-box;">LAST AUGUST, DURING the

second-hottest year on record, while the fires in the Amazon rainforest

were raging, the ice sheet in Greenland was melting, and Greta Thunberg

was being greeted by adoring crowds across the U.S., something else

happened that was of great relevance to the climate movement: An

attorney who has been battling Chevron for more than a decade over

environmental devastation in South America was put on house arrest.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. So on

August 6, Donziger left a Lower Manhattan courthouse unnoticed and

boarded the 1 train home with an electronic monitoring device newly

affixed to his ankle. Save for the occasional meeting with his lawyer or

other court-sanctioned appointment, he has remained there ever since.“I’m

like a corporate political prisoner,” Donziger told me as we sat in his

living room recently. The attorney, who is 6-foot-3, graying, and often

used to be mistaken for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio when he was able

to walk the city streets, was surprisingly stoic and resigned about his

predicament during my two visits to the apartment he shares with his

wife and 13-year-old son. But on this particular Wednesday, as the

winter sunlight in his living room was dimming and the charger for his

spare ankle bracelet battery flashed on a nearby shelf, his optimism

about his epic battle against one of the biggest oil companies in the

world seemed to be flagging. “They are trying to totally destroy me.”</div><div data-reactid="230" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Donziger

is not exaggerating. As he was arguing the case against Chevron in

Ecuador back in 2009, the company expressly said its long-term strategy

was to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6661647-Demonize-Donziger.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">demonize him</a>.

And since then, Chevron has continued its all-out assault on Donziger

in what’s become one of the most bitter and drawn-out cases in the

history of environmental law. Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a <a href="http://theamazonpost.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">publication</a> to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from <a href="https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/35294-Chevron-Using-60-Law-Firms-and-2-000-Legal-Personnel-To-Evade-Ecuador-Environmental-Liability-Company-Reports" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">60 firms</a>,

who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him. As

a result, Donziger has been disbarred and his bank accounts have been

frozen. He now has a lien on his apartment, faces exorbitant fines, and

has been prohibited from earning money. As of August, a court has <a href="https://www.makechevroncleanup.com/press-releases/2019/6/20/judge-kaplan-ordered-the-seizure-of-his-passport-computer-and-cell-human-rights-defender-steven-donziger-refused-to-turn-them-over-here-is-his-explanation" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">seized his passport</a> and

put him on house arrest. Chevron, which has a market capitalization of

$228 billion, has the funds to continue targeting Donziger for as long

as it chooses.In

an emailed statement, Chevron wrote that “any jurisdiction that

observes the rule of law should find the fraudulent Ecuadorian judgment

to be illegitimate and unenforceable.” The statement also said that “Chevron

will continue to work to hold the perpetrators of this fraud

accountable for their actions, including Steven Donziger, who has

committed a litany of corrupt and illegal acts related to his Ecuadorian

judicial fraud against Chevron.”The developments that led to Donziger’s confinement were, like much of the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">epic legal battle</a> he’s

been engaged in for decades, highly unusual. The home confinement is

his punishment for refusing a request to hand over his cellphone and

computer, something that’s been asked of few other attorneys. To

Donziger, who had already endured 19 days of depositions and given

Chevron large portions of his case file, the request was beyond the

pale, and he appealed it on the grounds that it would require him to

violate his commitments to his clients. Still, Donziger said he’d turn

over the devices if he lost the appeal. But even though the underlying

case was civil, the federal court judge who has presided over the

litigation between Chevron and Donziger since 2011, Lewis A. Kaplan,

drafted <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/donziger-osc.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">criminal contempt charges</a> against him.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 <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/when-feds-demur-judge-charges-ecuador-crusader-himself/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">unprecedented</a>. And, as Donziger’s lawyer has <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6664334-Letter-Re-Chevron-Law-Firm-Ties.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">pointed out</a>, the firm Kaplan chose, Seward & Kissel, likely has ties to Chevron.Making

the case even more extraordinary, Kaplan bypassed the standard random

assignment process and handpicked someone he knew well, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, to

oversee the case being prosecuted by the firm he chose. It was Preska

who sentenced Donziger to home detention and ordered the seizure of his

passport, even though Donziger had appeared in court on hundreds of

previous occasions.</div><div class="img-wrap align-bleed large-bleed width-auto" data-reactid="231" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2em 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; transition: opacity 300ms linear 200ms; opacity: 1; width: auto;"><div data-reactid="232" style="box-sizing: border-box;">[pix]</div></div><div data-reactid="233" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 1em 0px; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: ">A Tainted Witness</h3>Despite Donziger’s current predicament, the case against Chevron in Ecuador was a spectacular victory. The <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/chevron-lobbyists-fight-ecuador-toxic-dumping-case-93189" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">twisted legal saga</a> 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 <a href="https://chevroninecuador.org/assets/docs/2012-01-evidence-summary.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">massive contamination</a> from

the company’s oil drilling there. Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001,

has insisted that Texaco cleaned up the area where it operated and that

its former partner, the national oil company of Ecuador, was

responsible for any remaining pollution.At Chevron’s request, the legal proceedings over the “<a href="https://intercontinentalcry.org/chevrons-amazon-chernobyl-case-moves-canada/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Amazon Chernobyl</a>” were moved to Ecuador, where the courts were “impartial and fair,” as the oil company’s attorneys wrote in a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6662579-Impartial-and-Fair.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">filing</a> at

the time. The move to Ecuador, where the legal system does not involve

juries, may have also appealed because it spared Chevron a jury trial.

In any case, an Ecuadorian court ruled against Chevron in 2011 and

ordered the company to pay $18 billion in compensation, an amount that

was later reduced to $9.5 billion. After years of struggling with the

health and environmental consequences of oil extraction, the

impoverished Amazonian plaintiffs had won a historic judgment from one

of the biggest corporations in the world.But

Donziger and his clients never had a moment to savor their

David-over-Goliath victory. Even though the ruling was subsequently

upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, Chevron immediately made clear

that it would not be paying the judgment. Instead, Chevron moved its

assets out of the country, making it impossible for the Ecuadorians to

collect.That

year, Chevron filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations,

or RICO, suit against Donziger in New York City. Although the suit

originally sought roughly $60 billion in damages, and civil trials

involving monetary claims of more than $20 entitle a defendant to a

jury, Chevron dropped the monetary claims two weeks before the trial.In

its statement, Chevron wrote that the company “focused the RICO case on

obtaining injunctive relief against the furtherance of Donziger’s

extortionate scheme against the company.”Instead,

that case was decided solely by Kaplan, who ruled in 2014 that the

Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron was invalid because it was obtained

through “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/business/federal-judge-rules-for-chevron-in-ecuadorean-pollution-case.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">egregious fraud</a>”

and that Donziger was guilty of racketeering, extortion, wire fraud,

money laundering, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. The

decision hinged on the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge named Alberto

Guerra, who claimed that Donziger had bribed him during the original

trial and that the decision against Chevron had been ghostwritten.Guerra was a controversial witness. Chevron had prepped him on more than 50 occasions before his testimony, paid him <a href="https://chevroninecuador.org/assets/docs/2013-12-17-respondents-track-2-rejoinder.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">hundreds of thousands</a> of

dollars, and arranged for the judge and his family members to move to

the United States with a generous monthly stipend that was 20 times the

salary he received in Ecuador. In 2015, when Guerra testified in an international arbitration proceeding, he <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/ecuadorean-judge-backflips-onexplosive-testimony-for-chevron/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">admitted that he had lied</a> and <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/shaky-chevron-witness-assailed-in-new-brief/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">changed his story </a>multiple times. According to Chevron, Guerra’s inaccuracies didn’t change the thrust of his testimony. For

his part, Judge Kaplan wrote that his court “would have reached

precisely the same result in this case even without the testimony of

Alberto Guerra.” In its statement, Chevron said that Guerra was

relocated to the U.S. for his safety and noted that the court found that

the company’s contacts with the Ecuadorian judge were “proper and

transparent.”Lawyers

for Donziger said the changes in Guerra’s testimony completely

undermined his original bribery allegations, which Donziger has

consistently denied. In any case, that evidence emerged after the trial,

and an appeals court declined to consider the new information and ruled

against Donziger in 2016.</div><blockquote class="Pullquote Pullquote--right" data-reactid="234" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; margin: 2em -170px 2em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2em; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125; float: right; max-width: 75%;"><span class="Pullquote-line" data-reactid="235" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; position: relative; bottom: -4px; width: 2em; height: 0.7em; margin-right: 0.3em; float: left; background-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);"><div data-reactid="236" style="box-sizing: border-box;">“He

has effectively been convicted of bribery by the finding of a single

judge in a case in which bribery wasn’t even the charge.”</div></blockquote><div data-reactid="237" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Had

Donziger been criminally charged with bribery, a jury would have

assessed Guerra’s credibility. Instead, in the RICO case, which was

civil, the decision about a key witness came down to one person — Kaplan

— who chose to believe him. That choice has set the stage for

the legal losses Donziger has suffered since, according to some close

watchers of the Chevron case.“On

the basis of Kaplan saying, ‘I believe this witness; I find Donziger

guilty of the crime of bribery of the judge’ — on the basis of that,

he’s been destroyed. That is the pinnacle element of all of the other

claims against him. And if you take that one out, the rest of them —

they’re just not there,” said Charles Nesson, an attorney and Harvard

Law School professor. “He has effectively been convicted of bribery by the finding of a single judge in a case in which bribery wasn’t even the charge,” Nesson said of Donziger. “I teach <a href="https://wiki.harvard.edu/confluence/display/GNME/Main" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">evidence</a>, that you have to prove what you assert. But the proof in this case is the thinnest.”Nesson,

who represented Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case and the

plaintiffs in the suit of W. R. Grace featured in the book and film “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76093/a-civil-action-by-jonathan-harr/9780679772675/readers-guide/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">A Civil Action</a>,” teaches Donziger’s case in his “<a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/teaching/2019-09/fair-trial-fall-2019" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Fair Trial</a>”

course, using it as an example of a decidedly unfair trial. “Donziger

epitomizes a person in asymmetric civil litigation who can now be denied

a fair trial,” he explains to his students.Nesson is one of <a href="https://amazonwatch.org/news/2019/1001-chevrons-legal-thuggery-run-amok" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">several</a> legal

scholars who have opined that Kaplan has a soft spot for Chevron, which

the judge once described 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

on which every one of us depends every single day.”In

contrast, the judge has exhibited antipathy for Donziger, according to

his former lawyer, John Keker, who saw the case as a “Dickensian farce,”

in which “Chevron is using its limitless resources to crush defendants

and win this case through might rather than merit.” Keker <a href="http://admin.csrwire.com/system/press_release_pdfs/35574/original/Keker_Withdrawl_Motion.pdf?1367623064" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">withdrew</a> from the case in 2013 after <a href="http://admin.csrwire.com/system/press_release_pdfs/35574/original/Keker_Withdrawl_Motion.pdf?1367623064" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">noting </a>that “Chevron will file any motion, however meritless, in the hope that the court will use it to hurt Donziger.”</div><div data-reactid="240" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Donziger’s

current prohibition from working, traveling, earning money, and leaving

his home shows how successful Chevron’s strategy has been. But even as

his fate hangs in the balance, Donziger’s case matters far beyond the

life of this one lawyer.“It

should be nothing short of terrifying for any activist challenging

corporate power and the oil industry in the U.S.,” said Paul Paz y Miño,

associate director of Amazon Watch, an organization devoted to the

protection of the rainforest and Indigenous people in the Amazon basin.

“They’ve made it clear there’s no amount of money that’s too much to

spend on this case,” he said of Chevron. “They will stop at nothing.”</div><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-top: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); padding: 20px 0px 10px; margin: 7px 40px 20px 0px; float: left; width: 400px;"><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-thumbnail" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; z-index: 1;"><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;">
</a></div><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h6 class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-eyebrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: ">Related</h6><h4 class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: ">Under Left- and Right-Wing Leaders, the Amazon Has Burned. Can Latin America Reject Oil, Ranching, and Mining?</h4></div></div><div data-reactid="242" style="box-sizing: border-box;">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. Everything that’s happened to Donziger “is small potatoes

compared to the fact that Kaplan has rendered the damage the company

actually did as totally irrelevant,” said Nesson.But the latest twists and turns in the Chevron case may also be particularly bad news for climate activists. A mere <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">20 companies</a> are responsible for a third of the greenhouse gases emitted in the modern era; Chevron ranks second only to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/18/saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Saudi Aramco</a> among

them. And it’s increasingly clear that addressing the climate crisis

will require confronting these mega-emitters, whose resources for

litigation dwarf that of any individual.Making

Chevron and other companies clean up the messes created by their oil

production will speed the transition away from fossil fuels, according

to Rex Weyler, an environmental advocate who co-founded Greenpeace

International and directed the original Greenpeace Foundation. “If

hydrocarbon companies are forced to pay for the true costs of their

product, which include these environmental costs, it will make the

alternative energy systems more competitive,” said Weyler.Accordingly, Weyler feels that the climate

movement should focus on Chevron’s case — and Donziger’s legal battle.

“One of the most effective things climate activists can do right now to

change the system would be to not let Chevron get away with polluting in

these countries, whether Ecuador, <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/chevron-lawsuit-re-nigeria" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Nigeria</a>, or anywhere” said Weyler. While some human rights and environmental advocates have tried to <a href="https://amazonwatch.org/news/2019/1114-global-human-rights-and-environmental-communities-condemn-the-house-arrest-of-steven-donziger" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">call attention</a> to Donziger’s case and Chevron’s <a href="https://www.protecttheprotest.org/2019/02/25/the-first-annual-slapp-awards-2018/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">bullying</a> of him, Weyler felt that the outcry should be louder.After seeing what’s happened to Donziger, and some of his former allies, whom Chevron has gone after as “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/sludge-match-inside-chevrons-9-billion-legal-battle-with-ecuadorean-villagers-71779/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">nonparty co-conspirators</a>,” people may be afraid to stand up to the company. Donziger

himself is living in fear. There is no set punishment when a judge

files for criminal contempt of court, so he spends his days worrying

over what will happen to him next. “It’s scary,” he told me. “I don’t

know what they’re thinking.”But

Weyler pointed out that Chevron, which could still be forced to pay the

multibillion-dollar judgment by courts in another country, is also

afraid. “They are afraid of the precedent. Not only is Chevron afraid,

the entire extraction industry is afraid of the precedent,” said Weyler.

“They do not want to be held responsible for the pollution of their

industry.”</div></div><div>=</div></div><div></div><div>ppt</div><div>
</div><div>http://nacmconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/2015-NACM-Powerpoint-Judge-Preska.pdf</div><div>==
<div>fawning real estate superhottie</div><div>
</div><div><a href="http://abovethelaw.com/2014/07/lawyerly-lairs-a-judicial-divas-8-7-million-penthouse/">http://abovethelaw.com/2014/07/lawyerly-lairs-a-judicial-divas-8-7-million-penthouse/</a>
<div>.</div><div>
</div><div><div>Like any high-profile member of the bench, Judge Preska has courted her share of controversy.</div><div>
</div><div>Her

dismissal of a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit

against Bloomberg Inc. spurred condemnations from the National

Organization for Women and others, and she became the focus of heated

online invective after saddling Anonymous-linked hacker Jeremy Hammond

with a 10-year prison sentence.</div><div>
</div><div>Even a

seemingly innocuous photograph of Judge Preska in her chambers sparked

unexpected outcry after some took issue with an American flag carpet on

the floor of her patriotically bedecked office.</div><div>PreskaQuote</div><div>While

she acknowledges that it’s increasingly impossible to fully insulate

oneself from criticism in the press and online, she maintains that

having an awareness of that criticism does not mean it affects one’s

decision making.</div><div>
</div><div>“You hear some of it, and it

doesn’t matter if it’s something silly like [the flag controversy] or

about one of your cases,” Judge Preska says. “You have to take the good

with the bad.”</div><div>
</div><div>Judge Preska's work on the bench

is often guided by her belief in the tenet that certain limitations

have built into the judiciary and are necessary to maintain the balance

of power between the three branches of government.</div><div>
</div><div>“Obviously

sometimes there are ambiguities that require interpretation,” Judge

Preska said. “We interpret, and if Congress doesn't like the way we

interpreted the law, they change the law. This happens all the time.”</div><div>
</div><div>Her

major 2005 opinion dismissing American Electric Power Inc. v.

Connecticut — in which several states and environmental groups sought to

force six top power producers to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions

— provides a telling look at Judge Preska’s belief that courts must be

wary of encroaching on the policymaking authorities of Congress and the

executive branch.</div><div>
</div><div>In

that opinion, Preska asserts that political questions “are not the

proper domain of judges” and warns that the judiciary’s lack of

accountability to other branches means allowing judges to resolve such

questions would threaten to erode America’s bedrock principles of checks

and balances.</div><div>
</div><div>“That case to me cried

out as a political question,” Judge Preska recalls. “What leapt out at

me was that it laid out a policy, one that required balancing the

benefits of clean air versus business interests.”</div><div>
</div><div>Judge

Preska is nonetheless careful to acknowledge that hers is not an

absolutist philosophy, and that such determinations are ultimately up to

the individual jurist.</div><div>
</div><div>“I don't begrudge folks

who do policy arguments,” Judge Preska said. “Brown v. Board of

Education had a lot of policy arguments. But we have to be cognizant of

which branch of government we're in. We're in the third, not in the

first or second where they make these policy decisions.”</div><div>
</div><div>Judge

Preska says it has been her experience that judges who have spent time

as commercial litigators prior to joining the bench tend to have a more

finely tuned ability to locate the line between findings of fact,

conclusions of law and “veering off into policy.”</div><div>
</div><div>“You have to know where the line is and decide if you're going to step over it,” she adds. “It's up to each and every judge.”</div><div>
</div><div>A 'Down-to-the-Bone Civilized' Jurist</div><div>...</div></div><div>==
<div><div>Judge Loretta Preska has raised the bar, and taken the bully pulpit to a higher level.</div><div>
</div><div>Loretta

A. Preska is Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the

Southern District of New York and a former nominee to the United States

Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.</div><div>
</div><div>Jeremy

Hammond, loosely related to the group, “Anonymous”, was originally

indicted on six counts, including violating the CFAA and identity theft.

The indictment cites the allegation that credit card numbers were found

in the leaked Stratfor emails as an aggravating factor.</div><div>
</div><div>As

in many CFAA cases, the charges in Jeremy Hammond’s indictment were not

to come to court, but were used as a bargaining tool to get him to

accept a plea deal:</div><div>
</div><div>Even if I was found not

guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other

outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered

throughout the country. If I had won this trial I would likely have been

shipped across the country to face new but similar charges in a

different district.</div><div>
</div><div>Jeremy Hammond</div><div>Jeremy Hammond’s case was viciously handled by Judge Loretta Preska</div><div>In

his non-cooperating plea deal, Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty to one

violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA, enacted in

1986, is the primary US law dealing with computer crime, even though it

was written for the pre-internet age.</div><div>
</div><div>The CFAA

is a blunt legal instrument whose flexibility gives greater power to

prosecutors. The meaning of the CFAA’s provisions has changed

significantly since it was originally brought into force and, by

criminalizing violations of terms of service agreements, it effectively

allows corporations to determine what should be a criminal offense and

what damages should be applied.</div><div>
</div><div>Among things

Stratfor collected was U.S. government’s monitoring of the Occupy

movement to Stratfor’s own role in compiling data on a variety of

activist movements, including PETA, Wikileaks and even Anonymous itself.</div><div>
</div><div>I

did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments

and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is

right.</div><div>
</div><div>Jeremy Hammond</div><div>By pleading

guilty, Jeremy admitted to helping with a December 2011 attack that

breached the computer network of Stratfor Global Intelligence Service,

or Stratfor, a Texas-based company that provides geopolitical analysis

for clients including government agencies. He also pleaded guilty to

hacking several websites, including the Arizona Department of Public

Safety, the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the FBI’s Virtual

Academy and the sheriff’s office in Jefferson County, Alabama.</div><div>
</div><div>Jeremy Hammond Interview</div><div>Jeremy Hammond had many supporters</div><div>Federal Prison in Manchester, Kentucky</div><div>Jeremy Hammond's Federal Inmate Page</div><div>Jeremy Hammond</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>So What About Loretta Preska?</div><div>
</div><div>Hammond’s lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) filed

a recusal motion in December because the husband of Judge Loretta

Preska of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York,

Thomas Kavaler, was among the names of individuals who had their emails

and passwords disclosed in the hack.

Kavaler has continued to use the email address that was revealed at the

law firm where he is a partner, Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, and where

Preska once worked. The motion further alleged “more than twenty Cahill

Gordon clients were victims of the Stratfor hack, including Merrill

Lynch.</div><div>
</div><div>Preska denied the defense motion

to recuse herself. Hammond’s defense argued that it appeared there was

an obvious conflict of interest since her husband had his email and

major corporate clients of the law firm where he is employed disclosed

in the Stratfor hack.  Apparently, this wasn’t enough for Judge Preska:</div><div>
</div><div>Upon

review of the record, Defendant has failed to carry his substantial

burden of showing that a reasonable observer, with knowledge and

understanding of the relevant facts, would “entertain significant doubt

that justice would be done absent recusal,” Lauersen, 348 F.3d at 334.

Finding otherwise on a record as suspect as here would only encourage

supporters of this defendant—or other defendants—to

allege unsubstantiated conflicts of interest against any of my brothers

and sisters of the Court until no judge remained qualified to hear his

case. Therefore, accepting Defendant’s invitation for recusal in

this case would actually undercut the very policy Defendant prays this

Court to sustain-namely, promoting public confidence in the Judiciary.

Accordingly, Defendant’s motion to disqualify is DENIED. [emphasis

added]</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In lay terms, Preka

concluded Hammond and his supporters would never be happy with the judge

who replaced her so, even if the significant allegations about a

conflict of interest were true, it wasn’t worth it to step aside because

doing so would embolden Hammond and his supporters to challenge the

next judge assigned to hear the case — and the next judge assigned to

hear the case, and so on.</div><div>
</div><div>Federal Judge Loretta Preska didn’t see enough evidence to recuse herself — a decision made solely by herself</div><div>Michael

Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), denounced how

the US government is “hitting people” like Hammond “with sledgehammers

for telling the truth because they don’t want government and corporate

corruption, hypocrisy and criminality” to be exposed.</div><div>
</div><div>Rather

suggested that Hammond’s case was part of a struggle over whether

citizens are going to have a transparent government and corporations

that are transparent or a society with government and corporations that

continue to engage in “dirty tricks, hypocrisy and secrecy.”</div><div>
</div><div>The

real question here is why is it up to a judge to decide whether or not

to recuse themselves from a case? Why don’t we have a higher governing

power to strip judges of this authoritarian power? Essentially, we’re

taking our system of checks and balances and giving all of the power to a

judge. There are no checks & balances; it’s literally up to the

discretion of a singular, politician politician to decide their own

fate. What is fair about that?</div><div>
</div><div>The Disparate Sentence</div><div>Judge

Loretta Preska also had sole discretion on what to sentence Hammond to.

 With the guilty plea, Preska could sentence Hammond from anything to

probation up to 10 years.  Not surprisingly, Judge Preska, who so badly

wanted to preside over this case despite the obvious conflict of

interest, sentenced Hammond to 10 years — the maximum allowed.</div><div>
</div><div>A

10 year sentence is unprecedented for this type of case; the harshest

sentence ever handed down, and done so by a judge with a clear conflict

of interest.</div><div>
</div><div>Hammond will have to serve 102 of

those 120 months, per federal statute; prisoners generally serve 85% of

the time they’re sentenced to.  As a result, Hammond will not be

eligible for release until Christmas day — December 25th, 2020.  Jeremy

will be 35 years old when released.</div><div>
</div><div>While it

will be a merry Christmas one day for Hammond, it’s not a merry day for

justice.  Judge Preska remains on the bench of the Southern District of

New York — for now.</div><div>
</div><div>Resources and downloads:</div><div>
</div><div>Letter

from Jeremy Hammond regarding Aaron Schwartz, the founder of Reddit,

who was maliciously prosecuted by the federal government and ended up

committing suicide because of it</div><div>265 letters in support of Jeremy Hammond</div><div>A background on Jeremy Hammond</div><div>Judge Loretta Preska’s page on the federal government’s website</div><div>Manchester, Kentucky federal prison information</div><div>Legal Documents:</div><div>
</div><div>Hammond: Plea Agreement</div><div>Docket

#65 – TRANSCRIPT of sentencing proceedings as to Jeremy Hammond re:

Sentence held on 11/15/13 before Judge Loretta A. Preska.</div><div>Docket #64 – Count(s) 1-3, 4, 5, 6 are dismissed on the motion of the US</div><div>Docket #61 – Order to Unseal Document as to Jeremy Hammond</div><div>Docket 60-1 – Sentencing submission by USA as to Jeremy Hammond.</div><div>Help us stay on top of prosecutors and judges who don’t follow the rules</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://cases.nationalcdp.org/loretta-preska/">https://cases.nationalcdp.org/loretta-preska/</a></div></div><div>==
<div>https://freeanons.org/thomas-kavaler-denies-conflict-of-interest/</div><div>
</div><div><div>Kavaler

of Cahill Gordan & Reindel, husband of Judge Loretta Preska, has

issued an affirmation in regards to the conflict of interest discovered

in the trial of Jeremy Hammond. Judge Preska is the judge presiding

offer the case of the accused hacktivist who was recently denied bail

and, if found guilty of the Stratfor hack, is facing a potential life

sentence.</div><div>
</div><div>Anonymous

brought the obvious conflict of interest to the attention of Hammond's

lawyers and the public after Kavaler's email address, password and

Stratfor assigned user id were found in the documents leaked after the

hack. Despite this, Kavaler denies any knowledge of ever having a relationship with the private intelligence company Stratfor.</div><div>
</div><div>http://freeanons.org/wp-content/uploads/kavaler.pdf   affadavit</div><div>
</div><div>
</div></div><div>
<div>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/business/international-business-black-files-libel-lawsuit-against-hollinger-committee.html</div><div>
</div><div><div></div><div>Black Files Libel Lawsuit Against Hollinger Committee</div><div>
</div><div>By BERNARD SIMON</div><div>Published: February 14, 2004</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>TORONTO, Feb. 13— Conrad

M. Black filed a $644 million libel suit on Friday against members of a

special committee set up by Hollinger International, contending that

they had set out to transform him from ''a respected owner of a

successful media chain into a loathsome laughingstock.''</div><div>
</div><div>The

suit, filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice here, contends

that Richard C. Breeden, the committee's special counsel, and the

committee's other five members defamed Lord Black by accusing him and

his associates of improperly receiving $200 million in noncompete

payments from Hollinger. The special committee was created to

investigate the payments.[NOTE THEY DON'T SEEM TO CARE ABOUT OTHER

CRIMES OR MEBBE HAVE NO STANDING?]</div><div>
</div><div>The

suit also contends that members of the committee knowingly hid evidence

from Lord Black that would have supported his case that Hollinger's

board had properly authorized the payments.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Breeden's lawyer, Thomas J. Kavaler of Cahill Gordon & Reindel,

described the suit as ''ridiculous.'' In a statement, Mr. Kavaler said

that the lawsuit would not deter Mr. Breeden, who is a former chairman

of the Securities and Exchange Commission, from fulfilling his duties on

the special committee.</div><div>
</div><div>Besides Mr. Breeden,

the special committee members named in the suit are Gordon A. Paris,

James R. Thompson, Richard D. Burt, Graham L. Savage and Raymond G.H.

Seitz.</div><div>
</div><div>Lord

Black, who is Hollinger's biggest shareholder, is embroiled in a number

of disputes with the current directors over his stewardship of

Hollinger, whose holdings include The Daily Telegraph in London, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Jerusalem Post.</div><div>
</div><div>The two sides are scheduled to meet next week in a Delaware court, where each has filed suit seeking control of the company.</div><div>
</div><div>Among

the points of dispute is a tentative deal made by Lord Black in January

to sell his controlling stake in Hollinger to the British investors

David and Frederick Barclay, owners of Press Holdings International.</div><div>
</div><div>Hollinger's

board has challenged the legality of this deal and has invited other

offers. Several bidders stepped forward earlier this week.</div><div>
</div><div>A

person close to Lord Black said on Friday that the defamation suit had

been filed in Canada rather than in the United States because Canadian

libel law was more favorable to plaintiffs. Besides defamation, Lord

Black is seeking damages for conspiracy to injure, intimidation and

intentional misrepresentation.</div><div>
</div><div>According

to the suit, the members of the special committee induced Lord Black

last November into resigning as Hollinger's chairman and chief executive

so that they could gain control of the company ''to enrich themselves

financially and to further their business, professional and political

careers.''</div><div>
</div><div>''The defendants wanted to

destroy Black's reputation to enable them to achieve their goal,'' the

statement said. ''Knowing that if they published statements that Black

had taken unauthorized payments from Hollinger, such statements would

ignite a veritable firestorm of vilification and defamation in the

international media against Black.''</div><div>
</div><div>===<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/27/the_other_bradley_manning_jeremy_hammond" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/27/the_other_bradley_manning_jeremy_hammond</a>A federal judge has refused to recuse herself from

the closely watched trial of jailed computer hacker Jeremy Hammond, an

alleged member of the group "Anonymous" charged with hacking into the

computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor and turning over

some five million emails to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Hammond’s

lawyers had asked Federal Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself

because her husband worked for a client of Stratfor, and himself had his

email hacked. Hammond’s supporters say the Stratfor documents

shed light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and

spies for corporate clients. He has been held without bail or trial for

more than nine months. We speak with Michael Ratner, president emeritus

of the Center for Constitutional Rights, about Hammond’s case. [includes

rush transcript]===<h1 class="headlines" id="seo_headline" itemprop="name" style="line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Judge Denies Bail Request from Accused Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond</h1><div class="headlinetext" itemprop="description" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A

federal judge has rejected a request by lawyers for accused hacker

Jeremy Hammond to release the imprisoned activist into house arrest.

Hammond is accused of being a member of the hacker group "Anonymous” and

has been charged with hacking into the computers of the private

intelligence firm Stratfor. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has

continued to release the Stratfor documents, which number in the millions. Hammond’s

supporters say the documents shed light on how the private intelligence

firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. Jeremy Hammond

has been held without bail or trial for more than eight months. His

lawyers argued Tuesday the accused hacker would be unable to review the

troves of digitized evidence related to the case from jail, but their

request for his release was denied. Jeremy Hammond supporter Sue

Crabtree defended his alleged actions.</div>DN=<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=RT:A pretrial hearing in the case against accused LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond this week ended with the 27-year-old Chicago man being told he could be sentenced to life in prison for compromising the computers of Stratfor.Judge Loretta Preska told Hammond in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday that he could be sentenced to serve anywhere from 360 months-to-life if convicted on all charges relating to last year’s hack of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global intelligence company whose servers were <a href="http://rt.com/news/anonymous-stratfor-hacked-discredited-641/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">infiltrated </a>by an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.Hammond

is not likely to take the stand until next year, but so far has been

imprisoned for eight months without trial. Legal proceedings in the case

might soon be called into question, however, after it’s been revealed

that Judge Preska’s husband was a victim of the Stratfor hack.According to the indictment filed in March, Hammond illegally obtained credit card information stolen from Stratfor and uploaded it to a server that was unbeknownst to him maintained by the federal government. Months earlier the FBI

had arrested Hector Xavier Monsegur, a New York hacker who spearheaded

LulzSec under the alias “Sabu,"and relied on from thereon out to help

the authorities nab other individuals affiliated with Anonymous and

LulzSec. The feds say Hammond openly admitted to compromising

Stratfor’s data in online chats with their informant and unsealed a

three count indictment against him relating to hacking back in March.After Anons <a href="http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-stratfor-barrett-firm-777/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">gained</a> access

to Stratfor’s servers, they collected a trove of internal emails and

more thousands of credit card details belonging to the firm’s paid

subscribers that were released last Christmas. A class action suit was filed against Strafor over the breach of security, and in June the company <a href="http://rt.com/usa/news/stratfor-clients-anonymous-hack-014/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">settled </a>with its customers at an estimated cost of $1.75 million. Just

now, though, it’s been learned that Judge Preska may have a vested

interest in seeking a prosecution by any means necessary.Among

the thousands of Statfor client’s whose credit card data was

compromised in the hack alleged to be linked to Hammond is Thomas J. <a href="http://archive.org/details/Stratfor" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Kavaler</a>, a partner at the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP and the husband of Judge Preska. The

archived document dump released by LulzSec last year includes personal

information from Mr. Kavaler that suggests he was victimized in the

attack and thus qualifies for the class action settlement.In a press <a href="http://pastebin.com/MdACWfkY" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">release </a>issued

under the branding of the Anonymous collective, supporters for Hammond

call for Judge Preska’s immediate resignation from the case.“Judge Preska by proxy is a victim of the very crime s...===bs Thomas J. Kavaler is a member of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP's Executive Committee and its litigation practice group.<p style="margin: 0.85em 0px; font-size: small; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom

joined Cahill in 1975 after clerking for Judge Milton Pollack of the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He

became a partner in 1980 and was elected as a Fellow of the

International Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1996.

Tom

has successfully litigated a variety of high-visibility matters for a

roster of leading companies (and their boards, officers and directors)

in virtually every major field, including financial services,

entertainment, energy, telecommunications, publishing, professional

services, insurance, food and agriculture, healthcare and heavy

manufacturing.<p style="margin: 0.85em 0px; font-size: small; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">His practice is as varied as his clientele, with a long track record of victories in commercial

litigation, securities, class actions, insurance, intellectual

property, antitrust, employment, tax, corporate governance, product

liability, contracts and criminal law matters. Tom is recognized as one of the top 25 securities litigators in the U.S. by <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Benchmark Litigation and is recommended by <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Chambers USA and <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">The Legal 500 in commercial litigation in New York. He is also listed in <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Who's Who in American Law and <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Who's Who in America.

Tom

conducts jury trials, bench trials, appeals, commercial arbitrations

(and other forms of A.D.R), and administrative and investigatory

proceedings throughout the United States. He has served as an arbitrator

for the American Arbitration Association, National Association of

Securities Dealers, Better Business Bureau, New York Supreme Court and

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Tom has litigated extensively on behalf of Wall Street's largest brokerage firms and their senior officers. He

has represented Prudential Securities in several hundred matters,

including one that resulted in a landmark decision from the Second

Circuit that made new law on issues relating to the bonding requirement

for a preliminary injunction. His work for Prudential and others has

included the defense of dozens of employment disputes and arbitrations,

often arising from disputes wherein claimants allege wrongful discharge,

statutory violations, breach of contract and/or promissory estoppel.<h5 class="sectionHeading" style="font-variant: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Professional Activities:</h5><p style="margin: 0.85em 0px; font-size: small; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom

is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Life Fellow of the New

York Bar Foundation. He received the Fordham Law Alumni Association's

Medal of Achievement in 1998 and the Fordham University School of Law

Dean's Medal of Recognition in 2002.<p style="margin: 0.85em 0px; font-size: small; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom is a former Vice President of the Federal Bar Council and a former President of the Fordham Law

Alumni Association. Tom also has been a member of the Judiciary

Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.===wiki: Loretta A. Preska (born January 7, 1949 in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany,New_York" title="Albany, New York" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none;">Albany, New York</a>) is the Chief Judge of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Southern_District_of_New_York" title="United States District Court for the Southern District of New York" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none;">United States District Court for the Southern District of New York</a> and a former nominee to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Second_Circuit" title="U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none;">U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit</a>.
<table id="toc" class="toc" style="padding: 5px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);"><tbody><tr style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px;"><td style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px;"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; background-image: none;">Contents</h2> </div><ul style="line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#Background" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">1 Background</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#Consideration_for_higher_courts" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">2 Consideration for higher courts</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#Notable_cases" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">3 Notable cases</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#Personal" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">4 Personal</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#See_also" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">5 See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#References" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">6 References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#Sources" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">7 Sources</a></li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Background</h2>Judge Preska attended <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_College_of_Saint_Rose" title="The College of Saint Rose" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">The College of Saint Rose</a> (B.A. 1970), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordham_University_School_of_Law" title="Fordham University School of Law" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Fordham University School of Law</a> (J.D. 1973), and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_University_School_of_Law" title="New York University School of Law" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">New York University School of Law</a> (LL.M. 1978).Preska was an attorney in private practice in New York City from 1973 until 1992, initially with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel" title="Cahill Gordon & Reindel" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cahill Gordon & Reindel</a> and then with Hertzog, Calamari & Gleason (now <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston%26_Strawn" title="Winston & Strawn" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Winston & Strawn</a>).Judge Preska was nominated by President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H.W.Bush" title="George H. W. Bush" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">George H. W. Bush</a> on March 31, 1992, to a seat on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Southern_District_of_New_York" title="United States District Court for the Southern District of New York" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">United States District Court for the Southern District of New York</a> vacated by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Joseph_Ward" title="Robert Joseph Ward" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Robert Joseph Ward</a>. She was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_and_consent" title="Advice and consent" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">confirmed</a> by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate" title="United States Senate" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">United States Senate</a> on August 11, 1992, and received her commission on August 12.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Consideration for higher courts</h2>In 2007, it was reported that Judge Preska was on President Bush's short list of potential <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States" title="Supreme Court of the United States" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Supreme Court</a> nominees.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[1]</a>On September 9, 2008, Judge Preska was nominated by President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">George W. Bush</a> to be a United States Circuit Judge for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Second_Circuit" title="U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A._Preska#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[2]</a> Since Preska was nominated after July 1, 2008, the unofficial start date of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurmond_Rule" title="Thurmond Rule" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Thurmond Rule</a> during

a presidential election year, no hearings were scheduled on her

nomination, and the nomination was returned to Bush at the end of his

term.<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Notable cases</h2><ul style="font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX///8AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw/wLCAgQEAGpIDyT0IVcsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.v.Board_of_Governors_of_the_Federal_Reserve_System" title="Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[3]</a>��- In 2009 Preska presided over this suit sought under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act(United_States)" title="Freedom of Information Act (United States)" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Freedom of Information Act</a> to

require the Fed to divulge the names of private financial institutions

that received $1.2 trillion in public bailout money, along with the

types and amounts of collateral provided. On August 24, 2009, Preska

ruled against the Federal Reserve's attempts to block the release of the

recipient names.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[4]</a></li></ul><ul style="font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX///8AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw/wLCAgQEAGpIDyT0IVcsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Somali pirate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abduwali_Abdukhadir_Muse" title="Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse</a> - arraigned before Judge Preska in 2009,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[5]</a>��who later in 2011 sentenced him to 33 years in prison.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A._Preska#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[6]</a></li></ul><ul style="font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX///8AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw/wLCAgQEAGpIDyT0IVcsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Ghailani" title="Ahmed Ghailani" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani</a> -

On June 9, 2009, Judge Preska heard the plea of the first detainee

brought from Guantanamo Bay to stand trial in a U.S. civilian court.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[7]</a></li></ul><ul style="font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX///8AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw/wLCAgQEAGpIDyT0IVcsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond" title="Jeremy Hammond" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Jeremy Hammond</a> - the activist accused of gaining unauthorized access to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor" title="Stratfor" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Stratfor</a>'s computer systems, was denied bail by Preska; who warned that he could face life imprisonment.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[8]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[9]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[10]</a></li></ul><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Personal</h2>Preska is married to Thomas J. Kavaler, with whom she attended law school. Kavaler is a client of Stratfor. Kavaler was the editor in chief of the Fordham Law Review, and is currently a partner at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel" title="Cahill Gordon & Reindel" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Cahill Gordon & Reindel</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[11]</a><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">See also</h2><ul style="font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX///8AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw/wLCAgQEAGpIDyT0IVcsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_Supreme_Court_candidates" title="George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates</a></li></ul><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">References</h2><div class="reflist" style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; list-style-type: decimal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ol class="references" style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 3.2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: inherit;"><li id="cite_note-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Crawford_Greenburg" title="Jan Crawford Greenburg" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Jan Crawford Greenburg</a>, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/SupremeCourt/story?id=3235598" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">EXCLUSIVE: Women, Minorities Top Bush's Supreme Court Short List</a>, ABC News, June 1, 2007</li><li id="cite_note-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-2" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a>��}<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080909-8.html" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080909-8.html</a></li><li id="cite_note-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-3" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/new-york/nysdce/1:2008cv09595/335178/" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System</a></li><li id="cite_note-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-4" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE57O03P20090825" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE57O03P20090825</a></li><li id="cite_note-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-5" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aXIp4JHAgfh0&refer=home" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Bloomberg report on pirate hearing</a></li><li id="cite_note-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-6" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a>��}<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12486129" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">[1]</a></li><li id="cite_note-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-7" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a>��}<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5581MS20090609?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Reuters report on the hearing</a></li><li id="cite_note-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-8" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-stratfor-hammond-judge-440/" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">"Anonymous hacker behind Stratfor attack faces life in prison"</a>, 23 November, 2012, RT.com</li><li id="cite_note-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-9" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a>��}<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-chicago-man-denied-bail-before-nyc-hacking-trial-20121121,0,6065357.story" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">"Chicago man denied bail before NYC hacking trial"</a>, November 21, 2012, Chicago Tribune</li><li id="cite_note-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-10" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/27/the_other_bradley_manning_jeremy_hammond" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">"The Other Bradley Manning: Jeremy Hammond Faces Life Term For WikiLeaks and Hacked Stratfor Emails"</a>, December 27, 2012, Democracy Now!</li><li id="cite_note-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_ref-11" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E4D71338F931A2575AC0A965948260" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Loretta Preska Weds a Fellow Lawyer</a>, September 12, 1983</li></ol></div><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JBDGDIIM" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Bloomberg vs Fed FOIA Lawsuit Decision.pdf</a><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sources</h2><ul style="font-size: small; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX///8AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw/wLCAgQEAGpIDyT0IVcsAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/nGetInfo?jid=1936&cid=999&ctype=na&instate=na" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=); background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Loretta A. Preska</a> at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographical_Directory_of_Federal_Judges" title="Biographical Directory of Federal Judges" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Biographical Directory of Federal Judges</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain" title="Public domain" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">public domain</a> publication of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Judicial_Center" title="Federal Judicial Center" style="text-decoration: initial; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); outline: none; background-image: none;">Federal Judicial Center</a>.</li></ul><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">met hubby fordham law? she in FedSoc</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel  floyd abrams, mcConnellCahill Gordon & Reindel LLP (founded 1919) is a prominent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York" title="New York" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">New York</a>-based international <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_firm" title="Law firm" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">law firm</a> with offices in New York, Washington, D.C. and London. According to The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Lawyer" title="American Lawyer" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">American Lawyer</a>, Cahill is consistently among the most profitable law firms in the world.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[2]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[3]</a><div class="thumb tright" style="font-size: medium; clear: right; float: right; margin: 0.5em 0px 1.3em 1.4em; width: auto; line-height: 19.2000007629395px;"><div class="thumbinner" style="min-width: 100px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 222px; padding: 3px !important; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);">
<div class="thumbcaption" style="border: none; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; line-height: 1.4em; text-align: left; padding: 3px !important;"><div class="magnify" style="float: right; border: none !important; border-image-source: initial !important; border-image-slice: initial !important; border-image-width: initial !important; border-image-outset: initial !important; border-image-repeat: initial !important; background-image: none !important;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Floyd_Abrams_by_David_Shankbone.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); display: block; border: none !important; background-image: none !important;"><img src="http://bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.21wmf6/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" alt="" style="vertical-align: middle; display: block; border: none !important; background-image: none !important;" width="15" height="11" /></a></div>Famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution" title="First Amendment to the United States Constitution" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">First Amendment</a> advocate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Abrams" title="Floyd Abrams" style="text-decoration: initial; background-image: none;">Floyd Abrams</a> has been with Cahill since 1963</div></div></div><table id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 5px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);"><tbody><tr><td><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; background-image: none;">Contents</h2> </div><ul style="line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#History" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">1 History</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#Prominent_litigation_work" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">2 Prominent litigation work</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#Prominent_corporate_work" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">3 Prominent corporate work</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#Offices" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">4 Offices</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#See_also" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">5 See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#References" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">6 References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#External_links" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">7 External links</a></li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none;">History</h2>Cahill

opened its doors at 120 Broadway in 1919 as a small firm that quickly

built a national reputation in the financial and corporate areas. By the

end of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression" title="Great Depression" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Depression</a>, it had expanded to handle bankruptcies, reorganizations, and regulatory matters. During and after the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World_War" title="Second World War" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Second World War</a>, under the leadership of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Cahill" title="John T. Cahill" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">John T. Cahill</a>, former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney" title="United States Attorney" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">United States Attorney</a> for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_District_of_New_York" title="Southern District of New York" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Southern District of New York</a>,

the firm grew dramatically. As Cahill Gordon Reindel & Ohl, it

moved to 80 Pine Street, where it remains. Partner John Ohl, a tax

specialist, retired in 1976.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[4]</a> The firm established its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris" title="Paris" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Paris</a> office in 1928, though it closed in 2000 when the firm opened its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London" title="London" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">London</a> office.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Gordon%26_Reindel#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[5]</a> Today,

Cahill maintains offices in London and Washington D.C., though by far

its largest office is in New York City. Renowned for its corporate

finance practice and work in high stakes lawsuits, Cahill remains a

successful law firm with approximately 300 attorneys.<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none;">Prominent litigation work</h2>Cahill's

litigation practice is one of the more prominent in the United States,

handling high-profile securities, antitrust and first amendment

litigation. The firm's partners have made frequent appearances before

the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Court" title="United States Supreme Court" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">United States Supreme Court</a>. For instance, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadcasting_Co.v.United_States" title="National Broadcasting Co. v. United States" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">National Broadcasting Co. v. United States</a> helped establish the power and authority of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission" title="Federal Communications Commission" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Federal Communications Commission</a>. Another case, Times-Picayune v. United States, is among the Court's most important <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust" title="Antitrust" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">antitrust</a> rulings.PENTAGON PPRS?
On behalf of Cahill, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Abrams" title="Floyd Abrams" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Floyd Abrams</a> successfully defended <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">The New York Times</a> in the landmark <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co.v.United_States" title="New York Times Co. v. United States" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">New York Times Co. v. United States</a> case. In that 1971 case the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States" title="Supreme Court of the United States" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Supreme Court of the United States</a> refused to permit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon" title="Richard Nixon" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Nixon</a> Administration to stop the publication of thousands of pages of��<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War" title="Vietnam War" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Vietnam War</a>-related government documents. Thereafter, Abrams and Cahill became prominent defenders of the media and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_rights" title="First Amendment rights" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">First Amendment rights</a>. On

September 9, 2009, Abrams argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of

Senator Mitch McConnell in the highly publicized re-argument ordered by

the Court on the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold, defending the

rights of corporations and unions to donate unlimited amounts of money

to political allies in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v.Federal_Election_Commission" title="Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</a>. Cahill attorneys have appeared before the Supreme Court on behalf of the press in numerous cases of national importance.In late 2005, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_N.Kelley" title="David N. Kelley" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">David N. Kelley</a> joined

the firm as a senior litigator, having retired as United States

Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Under his leadership,

successful convictions for securities violations were obtained against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart" title="Martha Stewart" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Martha Stewart</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Ebbers" title="Bernie Ebbers" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Bernie Ebbers</a> in the collapse of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Worldcom" title="MCI Worldcom" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">MCI Worldcom</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rigas" title="John Rigas" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">John Rigas</a> for his role at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelphia_Communications_Corporation" title="Adelphia Communications Corporation" style="text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Adelphia</a>.</div><div>==
<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">fabu images of river and ny skyline</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://abovethelaw.com/2014/07/lawyerly-lairs-a-judicial-divas-8-7-million-penthouse/</div><div>
<div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BIGLAW, FABULOSITY, FEDERAL JUDGES, JUDICIAL DIVAS, LAWYERLY LAIRS, LORETTA PRESKA, MONEY, PARTNER ISSUES, REAL ESTATE, S.D.N.Y.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lawyerly Lairs: A Judicial Diva’s $8.7 Million Penthouse</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By DAVID LAT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">7 Comments /  84 Shares / Jul 15, 2014 at 5:34 PM</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chief Judge Loretta Preska</div><div>According

to Black’s Law Dictionary (affiliate link), a judicial diva is “a

particularly confident, skilled, and physically attractive female

judge.” By this definition, Chief Judge Loretta Preska (S.D.N.Y.) is a

judicial diva. She is highly regarded, as both a judge and an

administrator, and she never looks anything short of fabulous.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>I’ve been fascinated by Judge Preska for years. I had this to say about her back in 2004 at my first website,

Underneath Their Robes: “Magnificent. Tall, thin, elegant. Great bone

structure, perfectly coiffed silver hair. Note to self: nominate for

superhotties contest next year?”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This

gorgeous judge now owns a gorgeous apartment. Chief Judge Preska and

her husband, a partner at one of the nation’s most profitable law firms,

just paid almost $9 million for a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side….</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We’ve

mentioned Chief Judge Preska’s high-powered husband before. See, e.g., A

Solution to the Federal Judicial Pay Crisis: Marry Into Money:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Don’t

you just love couples in which one spouse is a judge, with all the

power and prestige of judicial office, and the other spouse is rolling

in dough? Off the top of our head, we can name a number of federal

judges who have married well — or at least wealthy….</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Loretta

A. Preska (S.D.N.Y.): Her husband, Thomas J. Kavaler, is a partner at

Cahill Gordon (2006 PPP: $2.575 million). He sits on the firm’s

Executive Committee.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>We wrote that back in 2007. Today Kavaler is still on the Executive Committee, but Cahill’s profits per partner are way higher — almost $3.8 million, according to the latest Am Law 100 rankings.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Belaire, at 524 East 72nd Street</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With

PPP that high, Cahill partners can easily afford to pay summer bonuses

to their associates — and still have lots of cash left for prime real

estate. The New York Observer reports:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Before settling a civil fraud suit with the SEC for $1 million and being banned from the securities industry, [former

Bear Stearns executive Richard Harriton] no-doubt employed that

charming cocktail [of personal attributes] to amass the sort of wealth

necessary to rest his head at a place that “looks like exactly the

apartment that somebody who was sued by the S.E.C.

would live in,” a three-bedroom penthouse at 524 East 72nd Street that

he’s just sold for $8.7 million, according to city records….</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Someone who once broke the securities laws sold his home to someone who now administers them:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The

buyers, Loretta Preska and Thomas Kavaler, are bigwigs in their own

right. Ms. Preska is chief justice of the US District Court for the

Southern District of New York, Mr. Kavaler a partner at the firm of

Cahill Gordon & Reindel. A prominent litigator on behalf of

financial firms and senior officers, Mr. Kavaler might have come in

handy to Mr. Harriton all those years ago. Of course, then he might not

have been able to move into his apartment.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Correction:

Preska is chief judge, not “chief justice.” But confusion is

understandable; back in 2007, Judge Preska was on President George W.

Bush’s Supreme Court short list.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Alas,

Judge Preska is now 65, making it unlikely that she’ll make it to

SCOTUS even if our next POTUS is a Republican. But her new apartment is a

nice consolation prize:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Perched

atop the Belaire condo building, a tony, white-glove affair, the

apartment first hit the market more than four years ago, but Mr.

Harriton was evidently unhurried, offering no major discounts. It isn’t

difficult to see why, provided that the right kind of buyer came long,

he felt confident in his product. There’s

a 700-square-foot wraparound terrace, panoramic views inclusive of the

East River, a private elevator and “massive floor-to-ceiling windows at

every turn,”

according to the listing held by Tal Alexander at Douglas Elliman. At

3,366 square feet, it includes custom wood cabinetry and sprawling

entertainment spaces, as well as inlaid hardwood floors shining at high

polish. In the living and dining rooms are rotund pillars and molding

sections that could be considered either stately or garish, depending on

your perspective, and to round things out: wood burning fireplaces and a

kitchen of the gourmet chef variety.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Actually,

it looks like Preska and Kavaler did get some sort of discount, even if

not a “major” one. The unit was listed for $9.2 million, and they

purchased it for $8.7 million — about 5 percent off. A judge and a

Biglaw partner know how to negotiate!</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Is the apartment worth what they paid for it? Let’s take a look….</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">wiki</div><div>Belaire Apartments (also known as the Belaire Condominiums and The Belaire) is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use" title="Mixed-use" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">mixed-use</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-rise" title="High-rise" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">high-rise</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium" title="Condominium" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">condominium</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartment_building" title="Apartment building" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">apartment building</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan" title="Manhattan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Manhattan</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City" title="New York City" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">New York City</a>. The 42-story<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-nyt101206-1" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[1]</a> building is located at 524 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/72nd_Street(Manhattan)" title="72nd Street (Manhattan)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">East 72nd Street</a> between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Avenue" title="York Avenue" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">York Avenue</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D.Roosevelt_East_River_Drive" title="Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">FDR Drive</a>.<div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; line-height: 1.3; background: none;">Contents</h2> </div><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#Description" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1 Description</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#History" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2 History</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#Plane_crash" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3 Plane crash</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#References" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">4 References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">5 External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Description</h2>It has 183 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium" title="Condominium" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">condominium</a> apartments, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_club" title="Health club" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">health club</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_garage" title="Parking garage" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">parking garage</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_pool" title="Swimming pool" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">swimming pool</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-condocompany-2" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[2]</a> The first twenty-one floors are used by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_for_Special_Surgery" title="Hospital for Special Surgery" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Hospital for Special Surgery</a> The building has prominent views overlooking the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_River" title="East River" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">East River</a>. It is 512 feet tall (156 m).It was designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_Williams_and_Associates&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Frank Williams and Associates (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Frank Williams and Associates</a>, and features a red brick facade. The building has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete" title="Reinforced concrete" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">reinforced concrete</a> structure, making it one of the tallest concrete buildings at the time of its construction.<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">History</h2>The building was completed in 1988 and was constructed by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zeckendorf_Company&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Zeckendorf Company (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Zeckendorf</a> Company, on the site previously occupied by a parking garage owned by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_for_Special_Surgery" title="Hospital for Special Surgery" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Hospital for Special Surgery</a>.After construction Belaire enjoyed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax" title="Property tax" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">property tax</a> reduction for 10 years as result of Section <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=421a_tax-abatement&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="421a tax-abatement (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">421a tax-abatement</a> certificates, a New York City <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_housing" title="Affordable housing" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">affordable housing</a> program.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a> This become possible as another company has rehabilitated 30 apartments at Spring Creek Gardens complex in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_New_York,Brooklyn" title="East New York, Brooklyn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">East New York</a> and sold resulting tax benefits to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zeckendorf_Company&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Zeckendorf Company (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Zeckendorf Company</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[4]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[5]</a>As of October 2006, residents included novelist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Higgins_Clark" title="Carol Higgins Clark" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Carol Higgins Clark</a> (38th floor); developer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arthur_W.Zeckendorf&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Arthur W. Zeckendorf (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Arthur W. Zeckendorf</a> (42nd floor); former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomingdale%27s" title="Bloomingdale's" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Bloomingdale's</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEO" title="CEO" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">CEO</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairman" title="Chairman" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Chairman</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Traub" title="Marvin Traub" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Marvin S. Traub</a>; once-jailed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk-bond" title="Junk-bond" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">junk-bond</a> king <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Boesky" title="Ivan Boesky" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Ivan Boesky</a>; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigar_Aficionado" title="Cigar Aficionado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cigar Aficionado</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_Spectator" title="Wine Spectator" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Wine Spectator</a> magazines <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publisher" title="Publisher" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">publisher</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_R.Shanken" title="Marvin R. Shanken" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Marvin R. Shanken</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Indians" title="Cleveland Indians" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cleveland Indians</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manager(baseball)" title="Manager (baseball)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">manager</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Acta" title="Manny Acta" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Manny Acta</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[6]</a> and Ex-President of Pakistan <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asif_Ali_Zardari" title="Asif Ali Zardari" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Asif Ali Zardari</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[7]</a>As

of 2007, the Hospital for Special Surgery continues to own the land,

and in exchange for selling the development rights to Zeckendorf, it

received use of the lower 12 floors for offices. Originally, nurses and

technicians were housed there, as these individuals had a difficult time

finding affordable housing in New York. Floors 13-22 are still used for

housing hospital staff and guests.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-nysun-8" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[8]</a> The

Belaire also houses office and laboratory space, sports injury

rehabilitation areas, and guest facilities for family members of

patients at the Hospital to which it is connected via a causeway on the

third floor.<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Plane crash</h2><div class="hatnote relarticle mainarticle" style="font-style: italic; padding-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 22.3999996185303px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Main article: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash" title="2006 New York City plane crash" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2006 New York City plane crash</a></div>On October 11, 2006, a four-seat, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Design" title="Cirrus Design" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cirrus Design</a> SR-20 single-engine, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-wing_aircraft" title="Fixed-wing aircraft" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">fixed-wing aircraft</a> owned by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Yankees" title="New York Yankees" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">New York Yankees</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcher" title="Pitcher" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">pitcher</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Lidle" title="Cory Lidle" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cory Lidle</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaire_Apartments#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[9]</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_11,2006_New_York_City_plane_crash" title="October 11, 2006 New York City plane crash" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">crashed</a> into the apartment building, killing both occupants, Lidle and his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_instructor" title="Flight instructor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">flight instructor</a> Tyler Stanger, and severely injuring one resident in the post impact fire. Initial fears that the incident was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist" title="Terrorist" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">terrorist</a>-related were unfounded, as confirmed by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI" title="FBI" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">FBI</a>.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">wiki</div><div>a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistani" title="Pakistani" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Pakistani</a> politician and current co-chairperson of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Peoples_Party" title="Pakistan Peoples Party" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Pakistan Peoples Party</a>. He served as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_Pakistan" title="List of Presidents of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">11th</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Pakistan" title="President of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">President of Pakistan</a> from 2008 to 2013. He is the first ever democratically elected president of Pakistan to have completed his five-year tenure.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asif_Ali_Zardari#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a> A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindhi_people" title="Sindhi people" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Sindhi</a> from a landowning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardari(tribe)" title="Zardari (tribe)" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">tribe</a> of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooth" title="Hooth" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Hooth</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baloch_people" title="Baloch people" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Baloch</a> origin, Zardari rose to prominence after his marriage to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benazir_Bhutto" title="Benazir Bhutto" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Benazir Bhutto</a> in 1987, becoming the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ladies_and_Gentlemen_of_Pakistan" title="First Ladies and Gentlemen of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">First Gentleman</a>. Between 1993 and 1996, he held various <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Pakistan" title="Cabinet of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">cabinet</a> positions in the second Bhutto administration including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Pakistan" title="Cabinet of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Federal Investment Minister</a>, and Chairperson Pakistan Environmental Protection Council (PAEC).He was arrested on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_charges_against_Benazir_Bhutto_and_Asif_Ali_Zardari" title="Corruption charges against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">charges of corruption</a> in late 1996, following the collapse of the Bhutto government. Although incarcerated, he nominally served in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Pakistan" title="Parliament of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Parliament</a> after being elected to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_of_Pakistan" title="National Assembly of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Assembly</a> in 1990 and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_Pakistan" title="Senate of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Senate</a> in 1997. He was released from jail in 2004. He subsequently went into self-exile in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai" title="Dubai" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dubai</a>, but returned in December 2007 after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Benazir_Bhutto" title="Assassination of Benazir Bhutto" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bhutto's assassination</a>. As the Co-Chairman of the PPP, he led his party to victory in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistani_general_election,2008" title="Pakistani general election, 2008" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">2008 general elections</a>. He spearheaded a coalition that forced <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pervez_Musharraf" title="Pervez Musharraf" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Musharraf</a> to resign and was elected President on 6 September 2008.As president, Zardari had been a consistently strong U.S. ally in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan(2001%E2%80%93present)" title="War in Afghanistan (2001–present)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">war in Afghanistan</a>,

despite prevalent public disapproval of the nation's involvement in the

conflict. In late 2008, his government obtained a three-year

multi-billion dollar loan package from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund" title="International Monetary Fund" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">International Monetary Fund</a> in an effort to steer the nation out of an economic crisis. In early 2009, his attempt to prevent the reinstatement of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Pakistan" title="Supreme Court of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Supreme Court</a> judges failed in the face of massive protests led by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawaz_Sharif" title="Nawaz Sharif" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Nawaz Sharif</a>, his chief political rival. His achievements included the passage of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_Constitution_of_Pakistan" title="Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">18th Amendment</a> in 2010 which reduced his vast presidential powers to that of a ceremonial figurehead.

He also held the honor of being the 1st president to address the joint

session of parliament for a record six times. His successor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamnoon_Hussain" title="Mamnoon Hussain" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Mamnoon Hussain</a> was elected on 30 July 2013. On 8 September 2013,

Zardari became the country's first president to complete his

constitutional term and handed over duties to a democratically elected

successor.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asif_Ali_Zardari#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[4]</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bs</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Thomas J. Kavaler is a member of the Executive Committee and Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP's litigation practice group.

Tom

joined Cahill in 1975 after clerking for Judge Milton Pollack of the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He

became a partner in 1980 and was elected as a Fellow of the

International Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1996.

Tom has

successfully litigated a variety of high-visibility matters for a roster

of leading companies (and their boards, officers and directors) in

virtually every major field, including financial services,

entertainment, energy, telecommunications, publishing, professional

services, insurance, food and agriculture, healthcare and heavy

manufacturing.His

practice is as varied as his clientele, with a long track record of

victories in commercial litigation, securities, class actions,

insurance, intellectual property, antitrust, employment, tax, corporate

governance, product liability, contracts and criminal law matters. Tom

is recognized as one of the top 25 securities litigators in the U.S. by<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Benchmark Litigation and is recommended by <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chambers USA and <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Legal 500 in commercial litigation in New York. He is also listed in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Who's Who in American Law and <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Who's Who in America.

Tom

conducts jury trials, bench trials, appeals, commercial arbitrations

(and other forms of A.D.R), and administrative and investigatory

proceedings throughout the United States. He has served as an arbitrator

for the American Arbitration Association, National Association of

Securities Dealers, Better Business Bureau, New York Supreme Court and

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Tom has litigated extensively on behalf of Wall Street's largest brokerage firms and their senior officers. He has represented Prudential Securities

in several hundred matters, including one that resulted in a landmark

decision from the Second Circuit that made new law on issues relating to

the bonding requirement for a preliminary injunction. His work for

Prudential and others has included the defense of dozens of employment

disputes and arbitrations, often arising from disputes wherein claimants

allege wrongful discharge, statutory violations, breach of contract

and/or promissory estoppel.<h5 class="sectionHeading" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: italic; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Professional Activities:</h5>Tom

is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Life Fellow of the New

York Bar Foundation. He received the Fordham Law Alumni Association's

Medal of Achievement in 1998 and the Fordham University School of Law

Dean's Medal of Recognition in 2002.Tom

is a former Vice President of the Federal Bar Council and a former

President of the Fordham Law Alumni Association. Tom also has been a

member of the Judiciary Committee of the Association of the Bar of the

City of New York.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div><div><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 19.2000007629395px;"><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tried to verdict (as lead trial counsel) a multi-week jury trial in a federal securities fraud class action.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Defended a former SEC chairman in litigation arising out of the numerous investigations into the affairs of Hollinger International.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Won dismissal in malpractice action seeking $104 million against an international AmLaw 100 law firm.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lead

defense counsel for one of the nation's largest providers of consumer

loans and credit cards in a private treble damages antitrust action

targeting client and other issuers of MasterCard and Visa cards. Also

lead counsel for this same client and several of its senior officers in a

federal securities class action.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Co-lead

counsel to the largest commercial and residential roofing manufacturer

in the United States in a RICO, antitrust and tort action against three

plaintiffs' law firms, arising from allegations of systemic misconduct in their handling of asbestos litigation.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lead

defense counsel for officers and directors of a leading provider of

investment, insurance and banking business process outsourcing services

in consolidated securities class and derivative litigation arising from

an income restatement.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Won a jury verdict for a major accounting firm sued for discrimination by a former partner.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">U.S. counsel to the Estate of Dame Jean Conan Doyle, daughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator

of Sherlock Homes. Successfully obtained dismissal and recovery of

attorneys' fees in a copyright action brought by an individual who

claimed to own the rights to Sir Arthur's work in the United States.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Negotiated

(and successfully defended on appeal) a $110 million settlement in a

multidistrict litigation arising from the sale of limited partnerships

by a leading securities broker dealer.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As

plaintiff's counsel for a major mortgage company, obtained more than

$10 million in recoveries from numerous title insurers arising from

various acts and omissions during hundreds of discrete real estate

closings.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Won a directed verdict in federal court on behalf of a leading Wall Street broker dealer against claims of securities and commodities fraud. Subsequently, numerous related actions in other jurisdictions were favorably settled.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Successfully defended an international Fortune 500 manufacturer in an SEC inquiry and private securities class action arising from widely publicized reports alleging insider trading by senior executives.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Successfully represented record labels

in contract litigation involving popular recording artists, including

Luther Vandross, George Michael, Barbra Streisand, Boston, Michael

Jackson, The Beastie Boys, Moby Grape, Pearl Jam, The Estate of Leonard Bernstein, Destiny's Child and others.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Won

significant jury verdict for senior officers of a dot com in

non-compete and compensation litigation with their former employer,

including an award of punitive damages.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Successfully defended product liability class action concerning Sony Playstation I.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Won

notable jury verdict on grounds of truth arising from libel claims

brought by Lyndon Larouche against NBC, and obtained $3 million jury

verdict on a counterclaim for tortious interference with newsgathering

(remitted to $250,000 by the district court and affirmed by the Fourth

Circuit).</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Obtained

dismissal of numerous actions (including state and federal class

actions and several arbitrations) that alleged a major insurer's

employee benefit plan operated to effect an illegal forfeiture of wages.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Successfully defended major accounting firm against tax and audit malpractice claims.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Obtained a multi-million dollar judgment (including punitive damages) for a client claiming investment fraud.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Favorably

resolved several breach of contract claims for international

manufacturing conglomerate and for a major consumer products

manufacturer.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Won summary judgment for a popular record club in a class action challenging its key business practice.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Obtained

(and affirmed) dismissal in an action brought against a Wall Street

brokerage firm by foreign nationals seeking $275 million in commissions

and finders' fees on a petro-dollar loan allegedly made by Saudi Arabian

interests to the Government of France. Subsequently supervised the

trial of the action in Parisian court and obtained a favorable decision

for the brokerage firm.</li><li style="margin: 0.75em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Successfully

defended a client against a race discrimination claim tried before a

state agency during numerous sessions over a two-year period. No appeal

was taken by the unsuccessful claimant.</li></ul></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> is

a member of the Firm's Executive Committee and its litigation practice

group. Tom joined Cahill in 1975 after clerking for Judge Milton Pollack

of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New

York. He became a partner in 1980 and was elected as a Fellow of the

International Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1996. Tom has successfully

litigated a variety of

high-visibility matters for a roster of leading companies (and their

boards, officers and directors) in virtually every major field,

including financial services, entertainment, energy, telecommunications,

publishing, professional services, insurance, food and agriculture,

healthcare and heavy manufacturing. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">His

practice is as varied as his clientele, with a long track record of

victories in commercial litigation, securities, class actions,

insurance, intellectual property, antitrust, employment, tax, corporate

governance, product liability, contracts and criminal law matters. Tom

manages jury trials, bench trials, appeals, commercial arbitrations (and

other forms of A.D.R), and administrative and investigatory proceedings

throughout the United States. He has served as an arbitrator for the

American Arbitration Association, National Association of Securities

Dealers, Better Business Bureau, New York Supreme Court and United

States District Court for the Southern District of New York. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom has argued thirty appeals which were decided in reported decisions, including Marsh v. Prudential Securities Incorporated, General Electric Co. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and two legs of the Zapata trilogy, Maldonado v. Flynn and Maher v. Zapata Corp. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom has extensively litigated on behalf of Wall Street’s largest brokerage firms, including Drexel Burnham [RIP] and E.F. Hutton (and a number of its senior executives in what the press labeled “the great check kiting scandal”).

He continues to represent Prudential Securities, having managed

litigation teams for the company in several hundred matters, including

one that resulted in a landmark decision from the Second Circuit that

made new law on issues relating to the bonding requirement for a

preliminary injunction. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom

is recognized among the top fifteen commercial litigators in New York

by Chambers USA: Leading Lawyers for Business; he is reported to be

among the nation’s leading securities litigators by Institutional

Investor’s Benchmark: The Definitive Guide to America’s Leading Lawyers,

and is also listed in Who’s Who in American Law and Who’s Who in

America. Tom is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a Life

Fellow of the New York Bar Foundation. He received the Fordham Law

Alumni Association’s Medal of Achievement in 1998, and the Fordham

University School of Law Dean’s Medal of Recognition in 2002. Tom is a

Vice President of the Federal Bar Council, a former President of the

Fordham Law Alumni Association and served as a member of the Judiciary

Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Collapse Detail</a></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">September 11, 2008 1:40 PM<h3 style="margin: 8px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); width: 350px; line-height: 17px;">Bush Nominates Preska, Paragon of Patience, for Second Circuit Post</h3>Posted by Brian Baxter<a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/11/preska.jpg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;"><img src="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/images/2008/09/11/preska.jpg" title="Preska" alt="Preska" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; padding: 0px; border: none; float: right;" width="150" height="186" border="0" /></a>We here at The Am Law Daily were pleasantly surprised earlier this week when <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080909-8.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">the Bush administration nominated</a> <a href="http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1936" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Judge Loretta Preska</a>from <a href="http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">U.S. district court in Manhattan</a>to serve on the <a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit</a>.The nomination itself comes as little surprise given <a href="http://law.fordham.edu/ihtml/news-2details.ihtml?id=612&nid=367" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Preska's Federalist Society credentials</a>,

but about 14 months ago we had the distinct pleasure of serving as a

juror in Preska's court in a civil case involving an incarcerated pro se

plaintiff suing several corrections officers at New York's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikers_Island" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Riker's Island</a> for alleged civil rights violations.Preska's

efficiency and patience in dealing with the plaintiff--who, observed

from the jury box, appeared to be stark, raving mad--impressed us during

the weeklong case. After we, the jury, returned a unanimous decision in

favor of the corrections officers, Preska entered the jury room and

explained why she chose not to dismiss the case despite the plaintiff's

frequent outbursts and utter disregard for courtroom procedure.

"Everyone," she said, "is entitled to their day in court."Preska has received more publicity recently for her <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7607752.stm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">decision dismissing claims brought by a driving instructor and two etiquette teachers</a> against makers of the comedy/documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan</a>.

For those just back from a couple years in a cave, the enormously

successful film starred an anti-Semitic "journalist" who traveled across

the U.S. in pursuit of his dream girl: Pamela Anderson. The defendants

claimed they were <a href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/10/ap5408453.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">tricked into signing releases for interviews</a> that subjected them to ridicule.In her <a href="http://howappealing.law.com/JudgePreskaBoratOpinion.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">September 3 ruling</a> that tossed the case--courtesy of <a href="http://howappealing.law.com/091008.html#030227" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">How Appealing</a>--Preska

noted that those same defendants had also accepted money from

filmmakers and signed agreements releasing them from any potential

liability.But Borat is not the only Preska decision to get tongues wagging. In August 2007 she <a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202422542681" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">issued a scathing sanctions order</a> against several lawyers from New York's <a href="http://www.cgsh.com/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton</a>, accusing them of showing "a willingness to operate in the murky area between zealous advocacy and improper conduct."The case pitted Cleary's client, the Republic of Congo, against several distressed debt investors, also known as vulture funds. <a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/06/clearys-swift-b.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">The Am Law Daily wondered in June whether Cleary had been "Swift-Boated" in the case</a>.<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E4D71338F931A2575AC0A965948260" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Preska is married to Thomas Kavaler</a>, a litigation partner at New York's <a href="http://www.cahill.com/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">Cahill Gordon & Reindel</a> and

a member of the firm's executive committee. And the Albany-born judge

(as an aside, we too were born in the shadow of New York's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany,_New_York" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">beautiful upstate capital</a>) stands by her man.In March 2007 she <a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1172829803728" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px;">refused to step down in a case involving the music industry</a> even though her husband and Cahill Gordon had represented several music company defendants in related litigation."Granting

the motion for recusal would clearly represent a waste of judicial

resources of this court," Preska said in her ruling.Now it looks like one of those resources, a valuable one at that, is moving on.<span class="blogComment" style="margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; color: rgb(62, 98, 90); font-weight: bold; line-height: 17px; width: 350px; background-image: url(http://devuxapp01.law.com/img/tal/07/arrow_green.gif); background-position: 73pt 5px; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1983</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Loretta

A. Preska, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Victor R. Preska of Delmar, N.Y.,

was married yesterday to Thomas J. Kavaler, son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph

O. Kavaler of New York. Justice

Ernst H. Rosenberger of the New York State Supreme Court[democrat,

airborne army]  performed the ceremony at the Water Club in New York.The

bride is a member of the New York law firm of Hertzog, Calamari &

Gleason and was formerly with the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon

& Reindel, of which Mr. Kavaler is a member. She is an alumna of the

College of St. Rose, and she and Mr. Kavaler graduated from the Fordham

University School of Law, where he was editor in chief of the Fordham

Law Review. They received master's degrees in trade regulation from the New York University School of Law.

The bride's father, who is retired, was an ordnance design engineer

with Benet Laboratories at the Watervliet (N.Y.) Arsenal. Her mother,

Etta Mae Preska, is a registered nurse at St. Peter's Hospital in

Albany.Mr.

Kavaler, an alumnus of City College, served as an Army captain. His

previous marriage ended in divorce. His father, a lawyer and collage

maker, is retired; he was an accountant in private practice in New York.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</div></div></div><div><h1>SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Conrad Black, F. David Radler and Hollinger Inc.</h1><h3>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2004-155</h3><h2>Relief

Sought Includes Penalties, Officer and Director Bars, and Imposition of

Voting Trust on Hollinger, International Shares Held by Black and

Hollinger, Inc.</h2>Washington, D.C., Nov. 15, 2004 -

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it has

filed an enforcement action in the U.S. District Court, Northern

District of Illinois, against Hollinger International's former Chairman and CEO Conrad M. Black, former Deputy Chairman and COO F. David Radler, and Hollinger, Inc., a Canadian public holding company controlled by Black.The

Commission's complaint alleges that from approximately 1999 through

2003, Black, Radler and Hollinger Inc. engaged in a fraudulent and

deceptive scheme to divert cash and assets from Hollinger International,

Inc., a U. S. public company and a subsidiary of Hollinger, Inc., and

concealed their self-dealing from Hollinger International's public

shareholders.The SEC's compliant requests that the Court:<ul type="disc"><li>enjoin the defendants from further violations of the securities laws,
 </li><li>order the defendants to disgorge their ill-gotten gains and pay pre-judgment interest,
 </li><li>order the defendants to pay civil penalties,
 </li><li>bar Black and Radler from serving as an officer or director of a public company, and
 </li><li>impose a voting trust upon the shares of Hollinger International held directly or indirectly by Black and Hollinger, Inc.
 </li></ul>Stephen

M. Cutler, Director of the Commission's Division of Enforcement, said,

"Black and Radler abused their control of a public company and treated

it as their personal piggy bank. Instead of carrying out their

responsibilities to protect the interest of public shareholders, the defendants cheated and defrauded these shareholders through a series of deceptive schemes and misstatements."Merri

Jo Gillette, Regional Director of the Commission's Midwest Regional

Office, said, "The Commission is taking action at this time because it

has obtained strong evidence to support the charges of serious

misconduct by the defendants. We intend to seek tough sanctions against

them based on these charges. However, our work is not done. We will

continue our investigation into wrongdoing at Hollinger."In the complaint filed today, the SEC alleges, among other things, that,<ul type="disc"><li>Black,

Radler and Hollinger, Inc. engaged in a scheme to defraud Hollinger

International shareholders through a series of related party

transactions by which Black and Radler diverted to themselves, other

corporate insiders and Hollinger, Inc. approximately $85 million of the

proceeds from Hollinger International's sale of newspaper publications

through purported "non-competition" payments.
 </li><li>Black

and Radler further defrauded public shareholders by orchestrating the

sale of certain of Hollinger International's newspaper publications at

below-market prices to another privately-held company owned and

controlled by Black and Radler, including the sale of one publication

for $1.00.
 </li><li>In

February 2003, Black, without obtaining the necessary approval from

Hollinger International's Audit Committee, authorized the investment of

$2.5 million of Hollinger International's funds in a venture capital

fund with which Black and two other directors of Hollinger International

were affiliated.
 </li><li>In

order to perpetrate their fraudulent scheme, Black and Radler misled

Hollinger International's Audit Committee and Board of Directors

concerning the related party transactions. Black and Radler also

misrepresented and omitted to state material facts regarding these

transactions in Hollinger Internationals filings with the Commission and

during Hollinger International shareholder meetings.
 </li><li>In

November 2003, Black approved a press release issued by Hollinger

International in which he misled the investing public about his

intention to devote his time to an effort to sell Hollinger

International assets for the benefit of all of Hollinger International

shareholders (the "Strategic Process") and not to undermine that process

by engaging in transactions for the benefit of himself and Hollinger,

Inc.
 </li></ul>Previously,

on Jan. 16, 2004, the SEC obtained a federal court order against the

Chicago-based Hollinger International, Inc. alleging that from at least

1999 through 2003, the company's Commission filings contained

misstatements and omitted material facts regarding transfers of certain

corporate assets to certain of Hollinger International's insiders and

related entities (SEC v. Hollinger International, Inc.).On

the same date, the SEC obtained a federal court order to ensure that

the work of the Special Committee of Hollinger International's board of

directors - including its efforts to recover and preserve corporate

assets - continued under the jurisdiction and oversight of the court.

Hollinger International consented to the entry of the order, which also

permanently enjoined the company from violating the reporting and

internal control provisions of the federal securities laws.Under

that order (See SEC Lit. Rel. 18551, Jan. 16, 2004), Hollinger

International is required to maintain its Special Committee to, among

other things, continue its investigation of alleged misconduct and its

efforts to recover and maintain corporate assets. In the event the

Special Committee's authority were in any way impaired, including

through a change in control of the company, Richard C. Breeden (the

current Counsel to the Special Committee) would serve as a court-ordered

Special Monitor to protect the interests of Hollinger International

shareholders.The SEC acknowledges the assistance and cooperation of the Ontario Securities Commission in the investigation of this matter.<img alt="" src="http://www.sec.gov/images/dot_orange.gif" width="6" height="9" border="0" />  <img alt="" src="http://www.sec.gov/images/dot_orange.gif" width="6" height="9" border="0" />  <img alt="" src="http://www.sec.gov/images/dot_orange.gif" width="6" height="9" border="0" />  <img alt="" src="http://www.sec.gov/images/dot_orange.gif" width="6" height="9" border="0" />  <img alt="*" src="http://www.sec.gov/images/dot_orange.gif" width="6" height="9" border="0" /><table width="100%" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td>Contact:</td><td>Merri Jo Gillette (312) 353-9338
Timothy L. Warren (312) 353-7394
Peter K.M. Chan (312) 353-7410</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>==</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>