Chevron in Ecuador

The Takeaway: Chevron CEO Big Loser in Latest Canada Court Decision Over Ecuador Pollution Judgment

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 20:02:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

The latest attempt by Chevron CEO John Watson to foist his company's RICO fraud from the United States onto Canadian courts just got slapped down by a three-judge panel from the Ontario Court of Appeal. This suggests the oil giant faces major hurdles in Canada in its campaign to evade enforcement of a $12 billion liability owed to Ecuadorian indigenous peoples and farmer communities.

The latest Canada decision, which can be read in full here, can only be described as a powerful rebuke to Watson, Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate, and the company's army of Canadian lawyers who are being paid big bucks to obstruct and delay the case. Consider these key takeaways from the decision:

Chevron's SLAPP-style harassment attempt to impose a $1 million costs order on the impoverished indigenous groups always was a classic corporate maneuver to evade liability by trying to end the litigation without a resolution on the merits. The Appeals Court vacated the order in its entirety. Chevron General Counsel Pate sent at least 20 high-billing lawyers to court, implicitly disclosing that the company was spending more in legal fees to obtain the costs order than it would have received had it been granted. Worse, almost all of the Chevron lawyers were bland white men in suits whose job apparently is to block aboriginal peoples from collecting money they need to clean up an environmental disaster caused by Chevron. The fundamental disparity in resources – Chevron makes $225 billion annually while the indigenous groups live in poverty due largely to Chevron's pollution – could not have been more stark.
Chevron's attempt to leverage U.S. Judge Kaplan's completely flawed civil RICO (or "racketeering") decision against the indigenous groups appears to have backfired yet again. It is becoming more apparent in Canada that the Kaplan decision is a debacle for Chevron and actually favors the aboriginal groups on a variety of levels. It is now seen as a product of Chevron's fraud in presenting false testimony from a disgraced witness paid $2 million who later admitted lying in court. No Canadian court wants to be told by a U.S. oil company that it must defer to a U.S. judge – especially one who conducted a hocus-pocus proceeding in favor of Chevron. Violating his duty of neutrality, Kaplan obviously bent over backwards to help the oil major. He also failed to disclose his own ethically dubious investments in the company when presiding over the RICO trial.
The three Canadian judges implicitly rebuked both Judge Kaplan and the Canadian motions judge who relied heavily on Kaplan's erroneous decision to impose the costs order, while ignoring the Ecuadorian trial court decision at the heart of the case. The Ecuador decision, we might add, was issued by the very court where Chevron for years insisted the trial be held. The panel wrote: "There can be no doubt that the environmental devastation to the appellants' lands has severely hampered their ability to earn a livelihood. If we accept the findings that underlie the Ecuadorian judgment – findings that have not yet been undermined in our courts – Texaco Inc. contributed to the appellants' misfortune." You can say that again – cancer rates in the area are skyrocketing, and untold numbers of people already have perished due to Chevron's refusal to abide by the Ecuadorian court order.
The Canadian court also found that Chevron obviously doesn't need its costs paid. How obvious is this? The company already has used at least 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers since the inception of the case. It grosses $225 billion per year. And yet, nary a word was written in all prior decisions on the issue. The Canadian panel confronted it directly: "Chevron Corp. and Chevron Canada have annual gross revenues in the billions of dollars. It is difficult to believe that either of these two corporations... require protection for cost awards that amount or could amount to a miniscule fraction of their annual revenues."
The decision was also an implicit rebuke to the duplicitous Larry Lowenstein, Chevron's lead lawyer in Canada and a partner in the prestigious Osler law firm. Lowenstein made a cameo before the appeals panel and tried to peddle the Kaplan decision as being the final word on the case. As said, that decision is a product of Chevron's fraud. Lowenstein used Kaplan to try to dupe Canada's judges, but they would have none of it. Osler cannot be so desperate for business that it would stoop to this level of "service" for a company known in environmental circles as a major polluter.

While the latest decision removes a major roadblock for the Ecuadorian indigenous groups, there is still substantial work to be done even after five years of litigation in Canada's enforcement courts. Chevron no doubt has many tricks up its sleeve, including trying to hide its Canadian assets in wholly-owned subsidiaries. Courts in Canada need keep their door open to human rights victims and resolve the claims in this matter without further indulging the company's dirty tricks campaign.

Five years already is way too long for any enforcement action, much less one where thousands of indigenous lives hang in the balance and where a final judgment has been rendered in the preferred jurisdiction of the debtor.

Chevron Lawyer Larry Lowenstein Continues to Mislead Canadian Courts About Company's Fraud in Ecuador

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 17:22:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit

To help Chevron block enforcement of the Ecuador environment judgment in Canada, company lawyer and Osler partner Larry Lowenstein flat-out lied last week to a panel of three judges on the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto. It is the vulnerable indigenous communities in Ecuador who pay the price for Lowenstein's bad form in service of one of the world's worst corporate polluters.

Lowenstein's partners at Osler naturally claim they run one of the leading business law firms in Canada. If misleading courts and shareholders on behalf of clients is how Osler gets its business, as Lowenstein seems to think, then those partners might need to rethink their marketing model.

Lowenstein made an interesting cameo for Chevron last Wednesday before the appeals panel in Toronto that heard argument over a $1 million costs order the oil major is trying to impose on the impoverished indigenous groups it poisoned. Those indigenous groups in 2013 won a $9.5 billion environmental judgment against Chevron, as determined by three layers of courts in Ecuador in the venue where the company insisted the trial be held and where it had accepted jurisdiction.

Since then, Chevron has hired 60 law firms and used roughly 2,000 lawyers to evade paying the judgment. It sued an American human rights lawyer for the Ecuadorians for $60 billion before dropping all money damages claims on the eve of trial. It is now suing the same lawyer (Steven Donziger) for $33 million in fees, trying to bankrupt him. (For background, see here.)

This is how Chevron rolls. And without lawyers willing to do its bidding, Chevron could never get away with such blatant misconduct.

Chevron's attempt to impose a costs order in Canada is a vital part of the company's global intimidation model. It is a brazen attempt to close the courthouse doors to the very people who are trying to collect a judgment Chevron owes that will be used to clean up the horrific contamination the company left on their ancestral lands. This is in consistent with a threat Chevron made in 2009 promising the indigenous groups "a lifetime of litigation" if they continued to pursue their claims.

"We will fight this case until hell freezes over, and then we will fight it out on the ice," said Charles James, Chevron's former General Counsel.

As the latest front man for Chevron's impunity campaign in Canada, Lowenstein claimed to the appeals panel that the Ecuador judgment was based on an "egregious fraud" because that's what a pro-business U.S. judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, determined after a lopsided "racketeering" trial held in 2013 where the court refused to consider any evidence of Chevron's environmental contamination. Kaplan also held undisclosed investments in Chevron during the trial, which for a myriad of reasons was called a "Dickensian farce" by noted U.S. trial lawyer John Keker.

(Here is a detailed press release and a 33-page report documenting Kaplan's erroneous findings.)

In making his argument, Lowenstein lied about the overwhelming evidence against Chevron in the Ecuador proceeding, ignored the false testimony that Kaplan credited in the RICO matter, and covered up evidence of Chevron's fraud in both Ecuador and the United States to try to distract attention from the company's liability.

Consider what Lowenstein failed to mention about Chevron's role in creating an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe in Ecuador so massive it is called the "Amazon Chernobyl" by locals:

Chevron was found by three layers of courts in Ecuador to have dumped billions of gallons of oil waste into the rainforest over a two-decade period, decimating indigenous groups and causing numerous cancer deaths. The court decisions were based on 105 technical evidentiary reports. Here is a summary of the overwhelming evidence; a legal brief that explains the history of the company's dumping and cover-up; and a summary of the high cancer rates.
Initially sued by indigenous villagers in New York in 1993, Chevron praised Ecuador's justice system thinking it could engineer a political dismissal of the case by shifting it to the South American nation. With the scientific evidence mounting in its preferred forum of Ecuador, Chevron sold its assets to evade paying the judgment.
Ultimately, Chevron was ordered to pay $9.5 billion in damages and costs. This amount is a pittance compared to the roughly $50 billion BP has paid for its much smaller Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010.
Chevron retaliated by suing the indigenous groups and their lawyers before Kaplan, who invited the company to file the action. Chevron then made a mockery of justice with Kaplan's blessing, dropping all damages claims on the eve of trial to avoid a jury. Chevron also bribed a witness with $2 million to claim that the judgment in Ecuador was "ghostwritten" – testimony that since has been proven false but was nontheless credited by Kaplan.
The bribed Chevron witness, Alberto Guerra, later admitted that he repeatedly lied under oath before Kaplan. Separately, a forensic examination by the American expert J. Christopher Racich demonstrated that the Ecuador trial judge wrote the decision on his office computer, contradicting Guerra's false claim that it had been given to the trial judge on a flash drive.
In total, 18 judges appellate judges in Ecuador and Canada have ruled in favor of the villagers and rejected Chevron's "fraud" claims. Yet Lowenstein refers only to a rogue decision from one U.S. judge who relied on false evidence for his findings in favor of the company. (The Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused to review those erroneous findings, as did the U.S. Supreme Court.) Lowenstein also ignores that 17 prominent human rights groups and 19 international law scholars have sided with the indigenous groups against Chevron.

Because of its corrupt acts and disdain for the rule of law, Chevron now finds itself in serious trouble. It faces possible criminal and civil jeopardy for its cover-up in addition to its $12 billion environmental liability (rising $300 million per year because of interest) to the people of Ecuador. Company management also faces a shareholder revolt over its unethical behavior.

Another big Lowenstein whopper before the Toronto appeals court came when he claimed that Donziger, one of the American lawyers for the villagers, "controls" monies that will be deposited in trust for a clean-up.The trust is actually controlled by the affected communities, not their lawyers.

Lowenstein's delightful little speech reminded us of the bit part played by a professor from Notre Dame who also allowed himself to be used by Chevron for money. That professor, Douglas Cassell, was slapped down by Notre Dame's administration for hiding the fact he was shilling for the oil giant while trying to act like a disinterested scholar. For background, see here.

The personal reputation of Lowenstein, and by extension that of the Osler partnership, is in play. The American law firm Gibson Dunn suffered a huge setback for its own unethical work of behalf of Chevron. Osler obviously is Chevron's answer to Gibson Dunn in Canada – a law firm with a willingness to cross the ethical line in "service" of a client engaging in criminal misconduct.

Lowenstein and his partners might make amends by disclosing how much the firm charges to engage in a representation that includes the distortion of facts and the misleading of courts on behalf of a human rights abuser.

Us and Them: Affected Peoples vs. Chevron in Canada

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 22:17:00 +0000

Reposted from Eye on the Amazon

The latest chapter in the decades-long struggle seeking justice for Chevron's crimes in Ecuador is taking place in Canada right now. Unfortunately, as the years grind by the issues being debated get further and further away from the substantive problems of environmental contamination and human suffering, and the process becomes stuck in a legal quicksand of Chevron's design. The hearings before the Ontario Court of Appeals this week were a perfect example of that.

Amazon Watch continues to bear witness to this ongoing perversion of justice, both because we ourselves are a target of Chevron's attacks, and also because the cynical strategy the oil giant employs is a real and present danger to corporate accountability work everywhere. For that reason we attended the hearings in Toronto this week along with artist and activist Roger Waters, founding member of Pink Floyd. Waters spoke to the media to express his outrage at Chevron's endless legal maneuvers to escape justice for its crimes.

"It's a fundamental question of whether corporations like Chevron ... should be allowed to use their financial muscle to destroy people with an absolutely vital claim to reparations for damages that were caused to them over many years," Waters said before the hearing. "The way Chevron has behaved here is against everything that any of us might believe society ought to be like."

This week was supposed to see the beginning of the appeal of the previous decision in this case - which was mixed (upholding corporate separateness but granting the Ecuadorians the right to a trial to challenge Chevron's completely unfounded allegations of fraud). Instead the Ecuadorians were forced to confront Chevron's demand that the communities come up with almost $1 million as a security fee for the appeal to proceed. This is yet another legal delay tactic from Chevron in their never ending hope that the people they harmed will either give up, run out of funds, or simply die off before they can force Chevron to pay up.

In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that the Ecuadorians could seek enforcement of the $9.5 billion verdict in Canada. Chevron's Canadian subsidiary, Chevron-Canada, holds approximately $15 billion in assets and since Chevron famously fled Ecuador with its assets to avoid paying (and invented an elaborate lie about fraud and bribery so they could countersue in the U.S. to make enforcement there very difficult), the Ecuadorians have been forced to pursue Chevron to Canada like a fugitive deadbeat.

Try to wrap your mind around this: the third largest corporation in the U.S., after spending billions to drag out a cut-and-dry case of deliberate environmental contamination for decades, is now demanding the the Ecuadorian communities pay $1 million for the right to an appeal which could finally permit seizure of their assets to pay for a clean-up.

To quote The Dark Side of the Moon: "And if your head explodes with dark forebodings, too..." yeah, that's an appropriate reaction at this point.

The lead lawyer for the Ecuadorians, Alan Lenczner, pointed out quite clearly that this was nothing more than a stunt by Chevron, stating that, "Chevron is one of largest companies in the world with over 1,500 subsidiaries, $225 billion in annual revenue, which is $1 billion a day for each working day, with a profit of $25 billion annually, working out to $1 million per DAY is hardly in need of protection!" In fact, just counting Chevron and Chevron-Canada's legal team in the room this week, there were at least twenty lawyers and their staff. The cost for their travel and billing right there is more than the security fund itself! That alone proves this is nothing but a punitive legal subterfuge, to our eyes.

But the hearing this week also had a new element which has previously played only a minor role in the several years this case has dragged on in Canada. The introduction of Peter Grant, a renowned Canadian aboriginal rights lawyer who recently helped to win a major case before the country's Supreme Court, had a profound impact on the proceedings. Peter made it clear to the appellate panel of Justices Hoy, Cronk, and Hourigan that this entire exercise was fundamentally an issue of access to justice for indigenous peoples. Grant, who had recently visited the Ecuadorian Amazon to witness the contamination along with Canadian indigenous leaders Phil Fontaine and Ed John and Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler, spoke with firsthand experience of what effect this order would have on the people still suffering today. This has even more resonance considering that Canada recently signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and there is much more respect in Canadian political discourse for indigenous peoples.

And that's the genuine issue that not only the Canadian appeals court but Chevron and its lawyers should be made to face every single day. People are still dying from the deliberate contamination caused by Chevron in the Amazon. This is not an historic case about reparation for past harms, but a very real and urgent need for clean-up today. Every day Chevron evades paying for that clean-up, more people in the region risk sickness and death. It must end here. As Roger Waters said, "if Chevron can go on fighting this for another twenty years, and they will if they can, what does that say about us as a human race, that we would allow such a thing? It says that we've lost our grip on the reins of civilization."

Chevron CEO Watson Leaves a Legacy of Toxic Waste

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:49:00 +0000

Reposted from Eye on the Amazon

After seven dreadful years, Chevron CEO John Watson recently made a surprise announcement that he is finally slinking off with his tail between his legs. Yet the world will continue to suffer from the disastrous effects of his terrible decisions for many years to come. Amazon Watch's history with Watson dates back to Chevron's merger with Texaco. John Watson was a principal architect of that merger, and at a Chevron shareholder meeting we presented him with a great deal of information about Texaco's environmental disaster in Ecuador and warned that if the merger went through then Chevron would necessarily assume all liability to clean up the worst oil-related disaster in history. Watson ignored us.

In 2010, Watson became CEO on the eve of the largest environmental judgment ever won against an oil company, in which Chevron was ordered to pay $9.5 billion to clean up Texaco's toxic mess. Chevron lost that trial after years of efforts to delay and derail it, and after thousands of pages of scientific evidence – much of which provided by Chevron's own experts – demonstrated the damage caused by Texaco's deliberate dumping and shoddy operations. At the time of that judgement, Watson had another chance to listen to the appeals of the people of Ecuador and finally do the right thing.

Not only did Watson refuse to take responsibility and clean up the toxic waste still poisoning these communities, but he focused the full weight of Chevron's legal and public relations might on demonizing the Ecuadorians and their lawyers, and he even countersued them, alleging extortion. The company is even seeking $32 million in legal fees in an attempt to personally bankrupt Steven Donziger, a key member of the legal team that achieved the historic judgment in Ecuador. We at Amazon Watch were pulled into Chevron's sham suit as an alleged "co-conspirator" for standing with the communities who sued to clean up their homes. It's estimated that, to date, Chevron has spent as much as $2 billion just to avoid cleaning up the toxic waste that Texaco admitted dumping in Ecuador.

In what some see as an existential threat to corporate accountability work in the U.S., Watson and his team also sought to trample the First Amendment rights of anyone who had ever dared to speak out about the company: journalists, bloggers, lawyers, advocacy organizations, activists, and even its own shareholders. Chevron's legal and public relations teams built a practice on intimidating its critics.

During his time as CEO, Chevron even approved payments to company witnesses and bribed them to falsify evidence and testimony in U.S. federal court. With these tactics, CEO Watson helped pave the way for a new wave of "racketeering" lawsuits that have since been filed by other corporations against a variety of environmental and human rights organizations, such as our friends at Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

Under Watson's misleadership, Chevron has distinguished itself as the worst U.S. oil company by eliminating its renewable energy program, closing its corporate social responsibility department, and attempting to influence politics by spending more on super-PACs than any other corporation immediately after the Citizens United decision.

In short, it would be hard for Chevron to do worse than Watson and we are thrilled to see him go. The company is still facing a collection action in Canada for its $9.5 billion debt to the people of Ecuador. A new CEO will have an opportunity to finally break with Chevron's abusive past and respect the rule of law and the environment.

Watson spent his time as CEO trying to make it harder for the environmental and human rights community to challenge corporate power, but we stand united and will continue to hold Chevron to account, no matter who is at the helm.

Chevron CEO Watson Tarred His Own Legacy by Fumbling Environmental Issues

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 15:37:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

Burdened with a series of intractable problems, Chevron CEO John Watson announced this week that he is stepping down after seven years at the helm of America's second-largest energy company. He will be remembered far more for saddling Chevron with huge environmental liabilities than for delivering value to shareholders.

Watson's legacy is to leave Chevron with a bleak long-term prognosis. While the fossil fuel industry faces unprecedented structural pressures, Chevron is arguably in a worse position than its peers. Watson made a disastrous bet in Australia on the Gorgon natural gas project, a move that landed him in major trouble with tax authorities and saddled Chevron with at least $20 billion in cost overruns.

But let's focus on Watson's most obvious mistake, Ecuador.

Ecuador is the place where Watson literally has blood on his hands for failing to address the fallout from Texaco's deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest when it operated six huge oil fields from 1964 to 1992. The dumping -- called the Amazon Chernobyl by locals -- decimated indigenous nationalities and continues to kill scores of innocent people as confirmed by multiple academic studies and various court rulings.

While Chevron left Ecuador in 1992, the company's toxic legacy -- including roughly 1,000 open-air toxic waste pits -- continues to cause grievous harm to the local population. Under Watson's recommendation, Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and now owns the Ecuador problem.

A successful litigation brought by local communities to repair the damage has captured the imagination of the world. The legal battle led to a $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuador in the venue where Chevron accepted jurisdiction and where it had insisted the trial be held. Chevron could have settled the claims for a relative pittance years ago. But under Watson, the Ecuador liability has now ballooned to $12 billion (with interest) in Canada, where the villagers are enforcing their judgment.

In Canada, the country's Supreme Court in 2015 unanimously backed an effort to try to seize Chevron assets to pay for the clean-up. Major international law scholars and civil society organizations, including Amazon Watch, also have backed the villagers.

Watson was the Chevron executive in charge of merging with Texaco back in 2001. At the time, environmental groups such as Amazon Watch warned him about the massive pending liability in Ecuador; he ignored the warnings, which perhaps explains why he doubled down and started attacking his victims and their lawyers. He also ordered a $2 million payment be made to a witness to lie in order to help the company cover-up its disastrous policy.

At the time Watson was director of Chevron's acquisitions, Chevron grossly overpaid for Texaco's assets given that there was no accounting for the Ecuador clean-up costs. But arrogance is Watson's hallmark personality trait.

Angry at being challenged by shareholders and activists, Watson and his General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate launched the most expensive corporate "defense" in history. They threatened the Ecuadorian villagers with a "lifetime of litigation" if they persisted. They had five shareholders arrested at an annual meeting after they challenged the company's Ecuador policy. Chevron's lawyers even fabricated evidence to secure a favorable "judgment" in a farcical non-jury trial in U.S. federal court, making a mockery of justice in the process.

A Chevron official wrote an email saying Watson's main litigation strategy was to "demonize" Steven Donziger, the tenacious Harvard-educated human rights lawyer who has led the fight against Chevron for years. Donziger personally deposed Watson in 2013 in New York. Although the pro-Chevron judge sealed the deposition -- a ridiculous and unnecessary move -- we can assert with certainty that Watson came across as an angry and petty man.

Watson even told Forbes he would stop the Ecuador litigation only when Donziger and the lawyers "give up" and quit the case. That's an intimidation strategy, not a litigation strategy worthy of a major public company that purports to behave ethically.

Watson tapped into shareholder resources to hire at least 2,000 lawyers and 60 law firms to try to beat back the courageous indigenous villagers -- another massive cost suck that suggests Gorgon was not Watson's only spending problem. In his latest maneuver, Watson has ordered his lawyers to illegally try to collect $32 million in legal fees from longtime nemesis Donziger.

Chevron's refinery in the California town of Richmond is another example of Watson's short-sightedness. Major fires at the refinery have spewed so much toxic waste that 15,000 local residents have been forced to receive medical attention. Rather than shut down or at least update the refinery, Watson tried to take over the town by financing a slate of candidates for city council while secretly funding an on-line newspaper to spew pro-Chevron propaganda.

Under Watson's leadership, Chevron has tried to buy its way out of its litigation problems by spending heavily in the political world rather than compensate the company's victims. Watson ordered Chevron to be a major donor to the Trump inauguration and other Koch-funded initiatives designed to increase corporate power. Watson also donated millions of Chevron dollars to the Clinton Foundation and the U.S. State Department during the Obama Administration at the same time his team was inappropriately lobbying to try to kill off the Ecuador liability.

Watson was willing to take extraordinary risks for the leader of a public company. His corrupt witness payments to Guerra and another Chevron employee, the infamous Diego Borja, continue to this day. With Watson's blessing, Chevron also spent at least $15 million on the corporate espionage firm Kroll to spy on Donziger and his colleagues and to try to enlist independent journalists to go undercover in Ecuador on the company's behalf.

Chevron's next CEO will need to clean up Watson's dastardly mess in Ecuador. Indigenous people are still dying in the Amazon because of the company's failure to address its toxic legacy. It's long past time for Chevron's Board to admit that Watson only has made matters worse both for the people of Ecuador and the company's own shareholders.

Haunted by Ecuador Judgment, Chevron Now Trying To Impose $32 Million "Fine" on Lawyer Who Beat It in Court

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:22:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

While fossil fuel giant Chevron still refuses to pay its $12 billion environmental judgment to the indigenous groups it poisoned in Ecuador, company CEO John Watson apparently has found the time to try to impose a massive $32 million liability on the solo human rights lawyer who beat his company in court.

As background, it is undeniable that Harvard Law grad and American human rights advocate Steven Donziger did something so extraordinary to hold Chevron accountable for its environmental crimes that Watson decided to launch a crusade against him. Working against huge odds with a team of Ecuadorian rainforest leaders and local lawyers, Donziger spent eight years (2003 to 2011) coordinating the litigation in Ecuador against Chevron over the deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of chemical-laced oil waste into the rainforest. The case took place in Ecuador at Chevron's insistence and the company accepted jurisdiction there.

After overcoming Chevron's repeated attempts to sabotage the proceeding, a court in 2011 found the company guilty and imposed a $19 billion judgment that was halved when a punitive damages penalty was struck. (The amount is now $12 billion because of interest.) It is without doubt the largest environmental judgment in history from a single court case. Chevron's toxic dumping in Ecuador decimated indigenous groups and caused an outbreak of cancer that has killed or threatens to kill thousands of innocent people. Locals call the catastrophe the "Amazon Chernobyl; this photo essay by acclaimed journalist Lou Demettais captures the brutal human cost of what can only be described as a deliberate act of industrial homicide.

The Ecuador trial-level decision against Chevron -- based on voluminous evidence including 105 technical evidentiary reports -- was affirmed unanimously by two separate appellate courts in Ecuador, including by the country's Supreme Court. Not even Chevron disputes that it dumped the toxic waste or that it was the exclusive operator of the oil fields. But to evade paying the judgment from its preferred forum, Chevron tried to cover up its criminal misconduct.

Chevron hired 60 law firms and roughly 2,000 lawyers and investigators in part to cook up fake evidence to file a "racketeering" (or RICO) case against Donziger, Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo, community leader Luis Yanza, and all 47 of the courageous villagers from the affected area who stepped forward as class representatives. As part of its intimidation model, Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate promised the indigenous groups and their lawyers a "lifetime of litigation" if they persisted.

Part of that model was to retaliate against Donziger personally back in New York federal court in an unprecedented collateral attack on a foreign judgment. Another Chevron goal was to use the retaliation case to try to intimidate lawyers and supporters of the villagers with the threat of harassing lawsuits. Chevron also peddled its false narrative from the case to the financial markets to distract from the Ecuador liability and to prop up the company's stock price.

A distinguished member of two bar associations, Donziger is a solo practitioner who along with environmental groups such as Amazon Watch and shareholder activist Simon Billenness has driven the accountability campaign against Chevron for over two decades.

Described as a man of "Herculean tenacity" by Bloomberg, Donziger is also known for creating a new human rights funding paradigm that has allowed the impoverished indigenous groups of Ecuador to sustain their case for years against one of the world's richest companies. The private financing model alone surely terrifies Chevron. Fossil fuel companies are not used to their victims being represented by top-flight litigators like Canada's Alan Lenczner or Brazil's Sergio Bermudes, who are trying to seize Chevron assets to force it to comply with the rule of law and pay the judgment.

If Chevron's so-called "retaliation" case against Donziger and the Ecuadorians was designed to silence their campaign, it obviously failed. Left with little to show for its massive expenditures on RICO given that the villagers are successfully enforcing their judgment in Canada -- with the Canada Supreme Court already ruling in their favor -- Chevron is now trying to "punish" Donziger back home. (For more on Chevron's difficulties in Canada from the Ecuador liability, see here.)

Chevron's attacks only serve to underscore the extent of the bullying approach being used. In fact, it is no less than staggering to see the extent of Chevron's cowardice in the context of its attacks against Donziger and the Ecuadorian indigenous groups. These attacks happened after Chevron sold off all of its assets in Ecuador as the evidence against it mounted.

Chevron generates revenue at roughly $200 billion per annum and pays its top lawyers at the firm Gibson Dunn $1,500 per hour; Donziger lives and works out of a small apartment in Manhattan while most of his clients are lucky to make $200 monthly. When Donziger and the villagers challenged Chevron's claim that the entire Ecuador lawsuit was "sham" litigation, the company dropped part of its claim to avoid producing internal documents related to its toxic dumping. (See here and here for articles Donziger has written about the case of the indigenous groups against Chevron.)

After having sued Donziger for roughly $60 billion, Chevron dropped all damages claims on the eve of trial in what can only be described as a bombshell retreat to avoid a jury of impartial fact finders. While that move took away any remaining legitimacy from Chevron's bogus case, it did allow the proceeding to be tried alone by a pro-corporate judge (Lewis A. Kaplan) who repeatedly made comments from the bench that the villagers interpreted as racist. Chevron also hired the corporate espionage firm Kroll to spy on Donziger while deploying at least 114 lawyers to fight him in court.

Under the U.S. Constitution, anybody sued for money damages has the right to a trial by jury. By dropping its damages claims out of fear Donziger would defeat its lawyers before a jury, Chevron bailed on the main part of its case to leave the dirty work to Judge Kaplan. One of Kaplan's first moves was to exclude the scientific evidence of pollution used to convict Chevron in Ecuador.

Judge Kaplan also prevented Donziger from telling his side of the story in open court as part of a series of rulings that seemed more in sync with a judicial apparatchik in Putin's Russia than a neutral federal judge. For a comprehensive summary of how Chevron made a mockery of justice in Kaplan's court, see here and read Donziger's appellate brief. Prominent attorney John Keker also accused Kaplan of showing "implacable hostility" toward Donziger and allowing the matter to "degenerate into a Dickensian farce" unworthy of any civilized country.

Chevron also used the Kaplan proceeding to unveil a new corporate playbook: invest massive sums to try to weaponize the American civil justice system to flog those holding it accountable. Chevron issued subpoenas to more than 100 environmental activists, bloggers, and academics who had some connection to the Ecuadorian communities. Yet at bottom Chevron had nothing other than a series of procedural complaints about the conduct of the Ecuador trial that already had been either corrected or rejected by Ecuador's courts.

With virtually nothing to work with, Chevron's lawyers became so desperate that they paid an admittedly corrupt Ecuadorian witness at least $2 million in cash and benefits to lie in Kaplan's court. That witness, Alberto Guerra, claimed Chevron lost the case because Donziger had arranged for a bribe to be paid to the trial judge so that his Ecuadorian legal team could "ghostwrite" the judgment. Guerra's claims have been thoroughly debunked by scientific evidence and rejected by three layers of courts in Ecuador, and by two appellate courts in Canada. Guerra later admitted under oath that he had lied repeatedly on the stand before Kaplan.

Kangaroo proceedings clearly produce kangaroo results that continue to haunt Chevron.

Chevron CEO Watson and his besieged General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate still stand by the fake "bribe" story. They pump millions of dollars of company funds into the Gibson Dunn law firm to propagate the core falsehood. Kaplan also refuses to set aside his ludicrous decision that the Ecuador judgment was obtained by fraud even though Chevron's case has fallen apart, potentially exposing the company and its lawyers to criminal liability.

The campaign against Donziger has become such an obsession to Watson and his management team that it threatens a serious blowback. Watson and Pate essentially have bet their jobs on the RICO case given the massive investment of resources in fabricating false evidence and attacking the human rights community. Major Chevron investors are furious and shareholder resolutions connected to the Ecuador liability have received widespread support in recent years.

Given that Chevron caved when it came time to test its evidence before a jury, the company is now trying to paralyze Donziger on the back end by insisting he pay the company $32 million to cover a small part of its legal fees in creating the sham allegations. The effort is a clear violation of the RICO law and the Constitution, as this court submission by Donziger points out. Simply put, there is no legal authority for Chevron to collect legal fees after it fabricated evidence and denied its adversary a jury.

In what can only be described as a situation that evokes shades of modern-day Russia, the same pro-Chevron judge in the U.S. (Kaplan) who already refused to hear evidence that Chevron defrauded the court to frame Donziger now gets to hear the motion to force Donziger to pay Chevron's fees for the work of its lawyers in framing him. That's not how the rule of law is supposed to be administered in a society with an independent judiciary.

(If you think the Russia comparison is inapt, read about a Russian lawyer named Magnitsky who was framed by multiple judges with fake evidence when he uncovered a massive tax fraud a few years ago. The book Red Notice by the American Bill Browder is the best account.)

Chevron's plan to try to use the case to isolate Donziger and his allies in the environmental community also has backfired. The villagers and their lawyers continue to garner deep support around the world. Among those in their camp are a brave U.S. Congressman, international law experts from nine countries, 17 environmental and human rights groups, members of the European Parliament, and artists such as actor and producer Trudie Styler and Sting.

A retaliatory legal action so petty and desperate from one of the world's largest corporations against a brave lawyer who stood up to Chevron's 2,000-person team would be hard to find in the history of America. The attacks against Donziger decidedly will not help Chevron diminish its growing risk from the Ecuador judgment. And we will see if the beleaguered Chevron legal team at Chevron's outside law firm of Gibson Dunn -- which had marketed itself as a "rescue squad" to save Chevron from the Ecuador liability -- will be able to survive its growing reputation as a serial ethical violator and fake fraud-producer for clients guilty of scandalous behavior.

Besides confronting a fading a business model in a world transitioning to clean energy, there is little doubt Chevron and other oil companies collectively face more than one trillion dollars of unbooked liability for causing environmental damage over many decades. The Ecuador judgment could be the first of many to come. Hence, the massive expenditures to try to kill off the Ecuador case continue.

Donziger and the Ecuadorian villagers have a $12 billion judgment against Chevron. If Chevron succeeds in obtaining a $32 million judgment against one lawyer who has little chance of paying even a small fraction of it, so be it. Anyone keeping score realizes that Chevron is getting devastated.

Chevron's latest attack on Donziger also underscores that bullying often trumps serious merits-based litigation at the highest levels of the fossil fuel industry. Chevron's attempts to defame its victims will not play well in Canada in the upcoming trial to enforce the Ecuador judgment. Chevron has an estimated $25 billion of assets in Canada or more than enough to pay the entirety of the amount it owes to the people it harmed in Ecuador.

The Canada trial likely will result in a remediation paid by Chevron of a humanitarian disaster that never had to happen. Now that it has, Chevron needs to stop presenting fake evidence to courts and cheating the people it poisoned in Ecuador.

Bloomberg Should Fire Legal Reporter Paul Barrett For His Blatant Bias

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 17:52:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

When is Bloomberg going to finally wake up and fire reporter Paul Barrett for his overall crappy reporting and his repeated bias in favor of Chevron in its scorched-earth campaign to evade paying the $12 billion Ecuador environmental judgment?

The latest example of Barrett's gutter-level pro-business "reporting" comes from a Bloomberg article last week about the latest attempt by a major corporation with environmental problems to use the RICO (or "racketeering") statute to try to intimidate and silence its activist adversaries. The article details how Resolute, a Canadian timber company, has accused Greenpeace of being a "global fraud" after the organization claimed the company was trying to destroy the Boreal forests in Canada.

Let's get this straight: Greenpeace is in the right (see this great video for its version of the case) to accuse Resolute of poor environmental practices. But even it was wrong, does that give a corporation the right to use RICO to claim Greenpeace is like the mob for calling it out?

For that matter, does the RICO statute which was passed by Congress to target the mob give corporations the right to try to sue Greenpeace or any other organization out of existence for exercising its First Amendment speech rights? That's what some corporations and their cheerleader-reporters like Barrett seem to think.

What Barrett should be writing about is how an increasing number of corporate litigation counter-attacks against activists and human rights lawyers are becoming a real threat to our democracy and to free expression. For background on this dangerous global trend, see this compelling blog by Otto Saki of the Ford Foundation and this analysis by Katie Redford of Earth Rights International. These important perspectives are absent from Barrett's reporting.

Now, to Barrett's bias in favor of his favorite oil company Chevron. In the latest article, Barrett tries to artificially give the shaky Resolute lawsuit some heft by comparing it to the RICO judgment Chevron obtained against American lawyer Steven Donziger and his Ecuadorian clients who won a historic $12 billion judgment against the company after it had dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon, decimating indigenous tribes and causing an outbreak of cancer.

(See here for a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron in the Ecuador case and here for the peer-reviewed studies showing high cancer rates in the affected area.)

In the RICO case, evidence demonstrates that Chevron fabricated evidence of a judicial bribe by illegally paying its star witness, Alberto Guerra, a $2 million bribe in exchange for his false testimony. The case fell apart after trial after Guerra admitted he lied repeatedly on the stand and a forensic analysis of the Ecuador trial judge's computers proved he wrote the judgment, contrary to Guerra's testimony that it had been ghostwritten by lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Chevron used hundreds of lawyers to target Donziger, a solo practitioner and human rights attorney. The company admitted its long-term strategy was to "demonize" him. But Chevron's lawyers, in an act of utter cowardice, dropped all damages claims against Donziger on the eve of the RICO trial to avoid a jury of impartial fact finders. This resulted in a ridiculous "judgment" from an arrogant, pro-business federal judge that Barrett constantly lauds in his reporting.

If you want to understand the utter depravity of Chevron's RICO case and why it has completely collapsed since trial, see this press release and this 33-page response to the erroneous findings of the trial judge. But you will hear none of these facts in Barrett's reporting. In his article on the Resolute lawsuit, he writes about the Chevron case as follows:

Chevron proved that its activist foes had transformed their suit against the company into an extortion plot featuring bribery, fabrication of evidence, and the ghostwriting of judicial opinions.

Really? As the above reports prove, this type of analysis is just flat-out wrong and deceptive. The totality of the evidence proves there was no bribe or ghostwriting and the only party to fabricate evidence in the RICO case was Chevron. Yet Barrett has completely ignored these critical developments. He does not even give a nod to the idea of a competing narrative. The perspective of Donziger and his clients is just flat-out missing from much of his reporting for Bloomberg.

While Barrett used his Bloomberg platform to repeatedly shill for Chevron during the RICO trial in 2013, he has never reported on the collapse of Chevron's RICO evidence and still acts as if the flawed judgment in that case is End of Story. Yet that RICO judgment is now virtually worthless to Chevron in courts around the world that are threatening to seize company assets. And, Chevron's RICO strategy has not stopped the Ecuadorian villagers from pursuing their claims in what surely has become one of the most successful corporate-accountability campaigns of all time.

Chevron now faces a veritable mountain of liability ($12 billion) in Canada in a judgment enforcement action that already won the unanimous backing of the country's Supreme Court -- another key development never reported on by Barrett. That's on top of the dozens of factual errors, use of outright plagiarism, and the fictionalized scenes in Barrett's supposedly non-fiction book on the Ecuador case that was rushed out in 2014 to celebrate Chevron's supposed "victory" over Donziger that never was.

The credibility of that book -- most of which could have been written by Chevron's public relations team -- was utterly destroyed in a point-by-point takedown by Donziger himself. Donziger, by the way, is still happily working to hold this monster corporation accountable for its environmental misconduct in jurisdictions around the world.

Barrett's errors in his Ecuador reporting curiously always point in one direction -- Chevron's. He has denied the truth about what really happened to the indigenous people of Ecuador, whitewashed the company's environmental crimes and fraud, and celebrated the "genius" of corporations that use the profits they suck out of the earth to manipulate the civil justice system and violate the constitutional rights of their adversaries.

The fact Barrett is part of a troika of business reporters who for years have shamelessly carried Chevron's water for its disastrous behavior in Ecuador is a real stain on Bloomberg's reputation.

To maintain her own credibility, Bloomberg editor Megan Murphy should get rid of this dinosaur once and for all. Bloomberg should assign a reporter to the Chevron legal beat who can write about these critically important matters with a more balanced perspective.

George Mason Law Professor Is Chevron's New Stooge in Ecuador Pollution Case

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:23:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

Note to George Mason University law students: exercise extreme caution when dealing with Professor Michael I. Krauss, a self-proclaimed "expert" in ethics who in his spare time shills for Chevron's criminal cover-up of its toxic dumping in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. You might want to ask Krauss in his next ethics class if his obvious ties to Chevron and his obfuscation of the truth compromise the academic standards of George Mason.

As background, Krauss teaches at a university that has received major funding from the Koch Brothers and their largely anonymous network of right-wing donors exposed brilliantly in Jane Mayer's book Dark Money. The Kochs have donated tens of millions of dollars to turn George Mason into a "libertarian mecca" that serves as a beachhead near the nation's capital for political and academic attacks on almost any form of government regulation. (See pages 149-151 of Mayer's book for background.)

We have no problem if Krauss is an avowed libertarian, even if his university has sold its soul to right-wing donors. We do have a problem with his estranged relationship with the truth.

In fact, in his many blog posts on Forbes on the Chevron case, Krauss repeatedly ignores, obfuscates, and distorts the most basic facts to apologize for the company's atrocious behavior in Ecuador as found by multiple courts around the world. Unlike the propagandistic blog posts of Krauss, these court findings are based on voluminous scientific evidence and peer-reviewed and scholarly research.

Consider what Krauss ignores in his posts about Chevron's role in creating a catastrophe so massive it is called the "Amazon Chernobyl" by locals:

**Chevron was found by three layers of courts in Ecuador -- the country where company lawyers had insisted the trial be held -- to have deliberately and systematically dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the waterways of the Amazon rainforest over a two-decade period, decimating indigenous groups and causing an untold number of cancer deaths. The court decisions were based on more than 105 technical evidentiary reports and Chevron's own admissions. Ecuador's highest court unanimously affirmed Chevron's liability.

Here is what Krauss ignores and doesn't want you to see: a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron; a legal brief that explains the horrific history of the company's toxic dumping, subterfuge, fraud, and criminal cover-up in Ecuador and the United States; and a summary of the peer-reviewed health studies that show high cancer rates and other impacts.

**Initially sued by indigenous villagers in New York federal court in 1993, Chevron praised Ecuador's justice system and accepted jurisdiction in the country thinking it could engineer a political dismissal of the case. After that failed, and with the scientific evidence against it mounting, Chevron sold its assets in Ecuador to evade paying any eventual judgment. Making a total mockery of the rule of law, Chevron then went into lockdown mode and tried to sabotage and paralyze the very trial it insisted on having. It once filed 39 repetitive motions in less than one hour just to tie up the court.

**Ultimately, Chevron was found liable in its preferred forum of Ecuador and ordered to pay $9.5 billion in damages and costs -- a pittance compared to the roughly $50 billion BP has paid out for the much smaller Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010. Yet rather than pay the judgment and clean up the toxic disaster it caused, Chevron threatened the indigenous groups who brought the claims with a "lifetime of litigation" if they persisted.

**Making good on its threat, Chevron retaliated by suing the plaintiffs and their lawyers under the civil RICO law back in the same U.S. court where it refused to defend the underlying claims. The company again made an utter mockery of justice, dropping all damages claims on the eve of trial to avoid a jury of impartial fact finders. Chevron then bribed a witness with a $2 million payment to claim that the judgment in Ecuador was "ghostwritten" by the plaintiffs -- an absolute lie that has since been proven wrong by a forensic examination.

For background on Chevron's criminal legal violations and witness bribery, see this brief filed before the U.S. Supreme Court, this legal submission, and this press release. Krauss also ignores the fact that 17 prominent human rights groups and 19 international law scholars have sided with the villagers in their campaign against Chevron.

**The bribed Chevron witness, Alberto Guerra, later admitted that he repeatedly lied under oath on behalf of the company in the U.S. federal court proceeding. Separately, a forensic examination by the American expert J. Christopher Racich demonstrated that the Ecuador trial judge wrote the decision against Chevron on his office computer, contradicting Guerra's false claim that it had been given to the trial judge on a flash drive just before it was issued.

**In the meantime, the Supreme Courts of two countries -- Ecuador and Canada -- have unanimously rejected Chevron's fabricated "fraud" claims and ruled in favor of the villagers. The affected communities and their legal team are currently trying to seize company assets in Canada and Brazil to force compliance with the Ecuador judgment. The next hearing in Canada is this October in Toronto.

**In total, 18 judges appellate judges in Ecuador and Canada have ruled in favor of the villagers. Yet Krauss writes only about a rogue decision from one U.S. federal judge who relied on false evidence fabricated from Chevron for his findings. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused to review those false findings, as did the U.S. Supreme Court.

Because of its corrupt acts in Ecuador and the United States and its utter disdain for the rule of law, Chevron now finds itself in serious trouble. It faces possible criminal and civil jeopardy for its cover-up in addition to its $12 billion environmental liability (rising $300 million per year because of interest) to the people of Ecuador. Company management, led by CEO John Watson, also faces a shareholder revolt over its unethical behavior in trying to evade paying the Ecuador judgment.

In his latest blog, Krauss tried to claim that a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to deny review of the deeply flawed RICO decision somehow vindicates the rule of law. Not true. The Supreme Court actually is turning a blind eye to the rule of law. Consider this shameful fact: no U.S. appellate court ever considered evidence of Chevron's contamination, the company's bribes of its star witness, the admissions by the Chevron witness that he lied under oath, or the results of a forensic examination that completely exposes the RICO decision for the fraud that it is.

Krauss also suggests that Steven Donziger, one of the American lawyers for the villagers who has courageously led the fight against Chevron, should be disbarred based on the company's fabricated evidence. Chevron has admitted its strategy in the case is "to demonize" Donziger rather than defend on the merits. Playing Chevron's game on this point is not only unethical, but could lead to serious problems for Krauss. Calling publicly for a fellow lawyer to be disbarred based on false evidence is itself a major violation of the rules of ethics.

This sad episode with Krauss reminds us of another law professor from Notre Dame who also allowed himself to be used as a Chevron stooge in the Ecuador matter, with disastrous results. That professor, Douglas Cassell, was slapped down by Notre Dame's administration for hiding the fact he was receiving payments from Chevron while shilling publicly for the oil giant. He was also forced to remove all of his Chevron materials from his page on the school's website. For background, see here.

Krauss should be forced to disclose to his students, the George Mason administration, and Forbes why he he has posted so many misleading blogs that try to apologize for Chevron's environmental crimes and fraudulent cover up. Is is possible that he too is being paid by Chevron or any of the many groups funded by the oil company? Has Chevron donated money to George Mason? If so, why has Krauss not disclosed these obvious conflicts of interest?

We might add that Krauss brags on his resume for having arranged the largest ever "anonymous" donation to George Mason. He might start the process of complying with his ethical obligations by disclosing whether Mr. Anonymous made his money in the fossil fuel industry, whether he is Charles or David Koch, or whether he might have something to do with Chevron. And Krauss might be forced by the George Mason law faculty to cease teaching "ethics" until he comes clean on his own ethical issues.

The personal reputation of Krauss, and by extension that of the entire law faculty at George Mason, is in play. The university has a robust ethics policy. It should be enforced. In the meantime, it is pretty safe to conclude that the blog posts of Krauss on the Chevron case are that of a political hack, not that of a law scholar.

Chevron's Payments To RICO Witness Are Not Just Ugly - They're Criminal

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 02:26:00 +0000

Reposted from The Huffington Post.

Fellow HuffPost contributor Paul Paz y Miño has a great post up on Chevron's payments to the "fact" witness at the heart of its insane civil "racketeering" (RICO) lawsuit against its own Ecuadorian contamination victims, focusing on the fact that the payments are not just unseemly and illustrative of the cynicism of the entire gambit, but also -- oh yeah -- illegal under federal law. This has not gone unmentioned, including most recently in an important amicus brief as described by Michelle Harrison of Earthrights International, but Paul's reminder about the legal framework is helpful.

Perhaps wisely, the Ecuadorian contamination victims have not thus far piled litigation upon litigation by pressing for yet another legal case out of these illegal payments, especially given that a federal law claim would be heard by a U.S. federal court system that has thus far utterly rolled over to Chevron—memorably described by the judge in the RICO case as "a company of considerable importance to our economy." (He went on to opine from the bench that "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 because these folks," i.e. the Chevron's Ecuadorian victims.)

But that doesn't mean the Ecuadorians (or federal prosecutors) wouldn't have a case if they saw fit to bring one before the statute of limitations expires sometime in the next year. Paul set out the relevant statute, 18 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., in his blog. It sets out the crime and associated fines and imprisonment (up to two years) for anyone who "directly or indirectly, gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, for or because of the testimony under oath or affirmation given or to be given by such person as a witness upon a trial." § 201(c)(2).

Critically, the only criminal intent required here is the intent to make the payment. If there provable "intent to influence the testimony," the penalty goes up to a maximum of 15 years imprisonment.

Did Chevron and its legal team at Gibson Dunn give "anything of value" to Alberto Guerra "for or because of [his] testimony" in Chevron's RICO case? Did they do so "to influence [Guerra's] testimony"?

Oh yeah. Oh $$$ Yeah.

The point of this blog is not to review all the ugly Guerra details. You've got Paul's blog, the Earthrights blog, and the recent amicus brief. You've got this analysis from when the payments were first uncovered, and this trial motion (to the biased judge above) to strike Guerra's testimony. You've got these reports and blogs about later Guerra recanting his obviously false testimony, and about that testimony later being proven false through a forensic analysis of the hard drive of an Ecuadorian judge. (This analysis showed that Guerra's elaborate story of helping to "ghostwrite" the environmental judgment against Chevron on one of the plaintiffs' laptops was flat-out false. The judgment was properly written by the Ecuadorian judge on his computer in chambers.)

Though we'll get to Chevron's "defense" in a second, this really isn't a subtle or nuanced case. As the snippet in Paul's blog sets out, this is Chevron handing Guerra a suitcase full of $18,000 in cash at their first meeting, and Guerra responding with "Couldn't you add a few zeroes?"

Many zeroes are indeed later added, in the form of more hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional cash payments and a regular "salary," a housing stipend, a car, health insurance, and permanent immigration to the United States—a benefit of priceless value to Guerra because it allowed him to reunite with several of his adult children living illegally in the United States who he hadn't seen in years.

In return, Guerra put himself and his testimony at Chevron's disposal. He was prepped for over 50 days by Chevron lawyers in advance of his RICO testimony, and has been trotted out to testify (falsely) in other subsequent proceedings. His "fact" testimony changed constantly (and dramatically) to fit shifting factual developments in the case and Chevron's needs at any given point. The whole thing was truly a disgrace.

Chevron's defense (and the company has spent well over $1 billion on legal fees in the case, so yes, it purports to have a defense) is that Guerra was paid not for his testimony, but rather for the underlying information he gave Chevron—and subsequently testified about.

You might be thinking: Say what? How is this not paying for testimony? You wouldn't be alone. When famed legal ethics and constitutional law scholar Dean Erwin Chemerinsky heard that Chevron and Gibson Dunn were making this claim, he was so outraged he offered the Ecuadorian a free legal opinion to try to convince the court not to accept the testimony:

[I]f a party or its counsel were permitted to pay a testifying witness for physical evidence, beyond the reasonable value of that evidence, and to pay the witness a salary in exchange for an agreement to testify, there would be little left to the rule against compensating fact witnesses. Lawyers could always circumvent the prohibition of paying non-expert witnesses for their testimony by saying it was to pay for documents or other physical evidence.

Specifically on the evidence versus information question, Chemerinsky did not entirely reject the notion that a party might be able to pay for "information," but emphasized the key restraint on any such practice—that the payments not enrich the witness.

If a lawyer pays a testifying witness for physical evidence, such payments must be based on the reasonable value of the evidence, and a reasonable fee for the witness's time spent gathering the evidence. For example, if a lawyer were to pay to obtain a computer from a witness, the lawyer should not pay the witness more than the replacement cost of the computer, and any costs incidental to copying the necessary data. In my opinion, the reasonable value of the physical evidence should not be based on its value to the lawyer or the party obtaining the evidence. If that were the rule, there would be virtually no limitation on payments that lawyers could make to fact witnesses under the guise of obtaining evidence.

Now, Chevron got an ethics opinion, too. It got it from Professor George M. Cohen at the University of Virginia Law School, and while it most certainly was not provided pro bono, Chevron apparently did the right thing by consulting with Cohen and explaining the situation before they made any payments to Guerra. The distinguished professor signed-off on some payments to Guerra in some circumstances, setting out clear ethical lines to be followed as Chevron entered such ethically tricky waters. So far, so good. (I have a dim view of the substance of the opinion, which I may explain in a later blog, but at least the approach thus far was minimally adequate.)

But then, Chevron and Gibson Dunn decided they didn't like all those ethical lines after all. For example, throughout his 20-page, gold-plated opinion, Professor Cohen repeatedly emphasized the importance of the fact that the substantial payments for information were okay because it was just a cash-for-information deal, unconnected from the focus of § 201, namely testimony . He wrote:

On its face, §201(c)(2) does not seem to apply to payments purely for information or documents, as opposed to testimony. Because Chevron intends to pay for pre-existing information, and currently has no intention to call the witness to provide testimony in the pending federal proceeding in New York, or any other federal proceeding, the payment does not seem to violate the statute.

But Chevron and Gibson Dunn decide they do want Guerra to testify after all. (Or maybe that was the plan from the beginning.) In any event, that's a problem given the do-not-cross lines set out in the opinion, right?

No sir, no problem at all! They go back to the good professor, who provides a revised version of the same opinion, neatly excising out the inconvenient (italicized above) parts:

On its face, § 201(c)(2) does not seem to apply to payments purely for information or documents, as opposed to testimony. Because Chevron intends to pay for pre-existing information, the payment does not seem to violate the statute.

Gee thanks Professor! What a pro. No wonder these guys are paid the big bucks.

With the "information versus testimony" distinction in mind, Chevron and Gibson Dunn and their agents met with Guerra. Their attempt to "stay within the ethical lines" is, frankly, comical. The meeting was recorded:

CHEVRON: The money we're talking about is for, the money has to be for information—

GUERRA: Yes, yes, yes.

CHEVRON: It cannot be for testimony. It has to be for, it has to be for—

GUERRA: Yes, yes, yes, but not for only—

CHEVRON: —or for creating any of that [VOICES OVERLAP]—

GUERRA: For example, for example, right now, of all that—right? I don't earn anything and neither do you.

CHEVRON: Uh-huh.

GUERRA: We can talk about gold, old man.

CHEVRON: Of course.

GUERRA: But, damn, in practice, nothing.

CHEVRON: Of course, but I mean, it has to be information, not— [OVERLAP]

GUERRA: Sure, this is a matter of "here you are, these are my documents ...

CHEVRON: There, that's it.

GUERRA: —and that has value. It's worth one, or worth a million. But that does have value.

CHEVRON: Exactly.

GUERRA: That's the whole issue. Sure, it's clear to me.

It's clear to us too, Alberto. All too clear.

You can almost see the grins on their faces as they go through this charade, knowing the recorder is running. At the end of this conversation, they "purchase" from Guerra the "information and evidence" listed on this Appendix: a used hard drive and a handful of flash drives, a few old calendars ("day planners"), and "permission to access, inspect, copy, and preserve" two email accounts. The reasonable value of all this, to Guerra? What do you think? Fifty bucks? One hundred?

Guerra gets a suitcase with $18,000.

Of course, that's not the "million" Guerra wanted. As was made "clear" to him, he would get it—he would have to wait a little bit.

At this point (or after another "purchase" of old technology and records for an additional $20,000), Chevron and Gibson Dunn start shifting the payments into a new "ethical" theory: witness expenses. For this theory, Guerra will indeed be a witness, utterly reversing the central fact that justified the first two Cohen opinions.

They need another ethics opinion. How to get it? Perhaps they approached a second ethics professor without telling him or her about Cohen? No, don't be silly. Remember, Cohen is a pro. He can handle anything.

So back to Cohen they go, now with the fact that they want Guerra to sign a contract sign a contract obliging himself to testify at Chevron's direction. Witness expenses are typically understood to include travel, accommodation, copying costs, and at most an hourly fee for discrete work. Here, among many other perks as noted above, Chevron put Guerra on an indefinite "salary" of $10,000 per month—20 times what he was earning before he started negotiating with Chevron. Nonetheless, Professor Cohen opines, this is a reasonable understanding of "expenses." (Professor Chemerinsky, meanwhile, makes clear that any payment of a "salary" to a fact witness is "a clear violation" of the rules.)

The problems with the Cohen opinions go on and on. I won't (continue to) digress. Sadly, for Chevron and Gibson Dunn, the opinions have basically the same value as they did on their sell-by date—not based on their ridiculous arguments and client-serving logic, but based their cover-your-ass (CYA) value. No matter how bad they are, Chevron and Gibson Dunn get to say, gee, he's the expert, how could we have known better?

Personally, I don't think it's enough in these circumstances. The fact that Cohen was so acrobatic in adjusting his opinions to suit Chevron's needs as they emerged I think lessens their CYA value considerably. Depending on the context in which a § 201 claim or criminal prosecution might arise, the central issue would still go to a jury: were Chevron's cash payments, $120,000/year "salary," immigration, and other perks, made to Alberto Guerra "for or because of [his] testimony" in the RICO case? (For the more severe sanction in § 201(b)(3), were the payments "corrupt," i.e. to "influence [that] testimony"?)

Not a toughie.

Not surprisingly, Chevron seems more than a bit nervous about l'Affaire Guerra. At Chevron's recent annual shareholders summit, Chevron played a video it had commissioned crafting itself as the hero of the whole Ecuador situation, an unfairly targeted corporation that had the guts to stand up to a criminal band of deceitful Ecuadorians and conniving U.S. lawyers. It then took questions. But when a question was asked about Guerra, Chevron CEO John Watson brusquely turned the entire meeting to another topic and the questioner's microphone was shut off.

But there are a lot of microphones that Chevron can't shut off. Shareholders ended up voting at historic levels to rebuke CEO Watson for his "mishandling" of the Ecuador case; a full 39% (a huge percentage for a shareholder resolution) voted to install an independent chair that analysts claimed would bring more perspective to the company's Ecuador strategy. (The company's self-stated strategy at present is "fight until hell freezes over, and then fight it out on the ice.")

In a year, Chevron and Gibson Dunn might breathe easier, as they will be able to try to fight off any criminal prosecution on the Guerra payments by pointing to the federal five-year the statute of limitations. Until then, Chevron's fight on the ice is more like a cold sweat. We'll see what happens next.

Chevron CEO Is Lying to His Own Shareholders Over $12 Billion Ecuador Liability

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 19:47:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

One thing clear from the wreckage that was Chevron's annual meeting this week: CEO John Watson is blatantly lying to his own shareholders over the disastrous handling of the company's $12 billion Ecuador environmental liability.

Putting out fake news is not working for Donald Trump and it will not work for John Watson either. But that is exactly what he is trying to do to obfuscate the company's responsibility for dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the waterways of indigenous groups in Ecuador's Amazon.

Chevron's liability stems from the findings by three layers of courts in Ecuador that the company deliberately discharged the oil waste over two decades and abandoned roughly 1,000 unlined oil waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor. The contamination decimated indigenous groups, causing an outbreak of cancer that has killed or threatens to kill thousands of innocent civilians. Chevron operated in Ecuador under the Texaco brand from 1964 to 1992.

(See here for a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron. See here for a photo essay by journalist Lou Dematteis on the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Chevron's oil pollution in Ecuador.)

Worse, Watson and members of his legal team -- led by Chief Counsel R. Hewitt Pate and outside counsel Randy Mastro -- might face criminal prosecution for bribing a critical witness to try to evade paying the judgment. That's on top of Watson recently being caught red-handed trying to rip off Australia with a tax scheme related to the company's Gorgon natural gas project, costing Chevron shareholders about $300 million in addition to major reputational damage.

As we sit here today, after two decades of the historic battle in Ecuador between Big Oil and indigenous groups, Watson's biggest problem is that a legal case that the company probably could have settled for approximately $100 million in the mid-1990s is now worth $12 billion. That's on top of the estimated $2 billion Chevron has spent on 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers to defend the case. And it doesn't include the $300 million in annual interest that accrues to the judgment.

The $12 billion figure is based on a final and enforceable judgment that was affirmed unanimously by Ecuador's Supreme Court in the venue where Chevron accepted jurisdiction. The company had filed 14 sworn affidavits praising Ecuador's judicial system when it insisted the trial be held in the country. Now, Watson refuses to pay the judgment despite overwhelming evidence of Chevron's toxic dumping, fraud, and other wrongdoing .

One might think that by now Chevron's massive expenditures should have achieved its obvious objective -- the killing off of the environmental claims of the villagers. Instead, the expenditures seem to be backfiring. The villagers simply won't go away. Despite some occasional setbacks through the years, the undeniable truth is that they are now gaining strength both in court and with the company's own shareholders.

In court, Chevron faces a critical hearing this October in Toronto as the villagers try to seize company assets in Canada to recover the full amount of their judgment. Already, two appellate courts in Canada (including the nation's Supreme Court) have ruled unanimously against Chevron as Watson continues to fail in his attempts to try to shut down the the asset seizure action.

Watson's effort to block a similar enforcement action targeting company assets in Brazil also has failed.

Among Chevron shareholders, several large institutional investors put the hurt on Watson at the company's annual meeting. They lined up behind a resolution that accused Watson of "materially mishandling" the Ecuador litigation. This is a startling public rebuke of a CEO that one rarely sees in annual meetings of large companies.

One shareholder resolution that sought Watson's removal as Chairman over the Ecuador disaster received a whopping 39% of all outstanding shares -- a huge level of support. Normally, a shareholder resolution that receives 10% support is considered fantastically successful. Two other resolutions challenging Watson over his mishandling of the Ecuador litigation also received significant support. One received 31%, the other 20%.

In the court of public opinion, Watson's position also seems to be deteriorating as he fails to address shareholder concerns over Ecuador.

After the slap down of Watson's leadership at the annual meeting, Watson made the extraordinary claim that the company's Ecuador policy actually "enjoys overwhelming support from shareholders." Watson later turned off the microphone when a shareholder challenged him over the Ecuador policy. He is burying his head in the sand.

In his terse statements about Ecuador at the meeting, where he looked visibly uncomfortable, Watson refused to acknowledge that 43 civil society groups sent him a letter criticizing the company's attempt to use "racketeering" laws in the U.S. to retaliate against the villagers and their lawyers. He also ignored the 17 environmental and human rights groups and 19 international law scholars who have backed the villagers in legal briefs.

Watson's so-called "disclosure" of the Ecuador liability at the annual meeting and in the company's public filings are part of an elaborately constructed lie.

Watson tries to claim a 2013 decision by a U.S. federal judge in a farcical non-jury trial that has no legal relevance somehow nullifies the entire Ecuador judgment. But even in that one-sided proceeding, called a Dickensian farce by a prominent trial lawyer, the judge said he was not exonerating Chevron from its responsibility for the environmental damage in Ecuador.

Further, the entire factual basis for that U.S. case has collapsed in spectacular fashion -- a reality that Watson also refused to acknowledge to shareholders or in the company's SEC filings. It turns out that Chevron bribed its admittedly corrupt star witness, Alberto Guerra, with $2 million in cash and benefits. That witness later admitted repeatedly lying in U.S. court about several key issues.

Worse, Guerra's lies were corroborated by a scientific forensic analysis that completely debunks Chevron's main defense in the case. This bombshell report also explains in detail how Chevron fabricated evidence to try to evade paying the Ecuador judgment.

Amazon Watch, the environmental group that has battled Chevron for years, posted a blog detailing how the company's illegal witness payments likely violate federal criminal law and could subject those involved to criminal prosecution. Another prominent U.S. environmental group, Earth Rights International, also posted a blog explaining how Chevron fabricated evidence.

We will give the final word to Carlos Guaman, the President of the Ecuador-based Amazon Defense Coalition, known more widely by its Spanish acronym FDA. The FDA is the group that has received international renown for courageously bringing the environmental lawsuit against Chevron on behalf of the affected indigenous and farmer communities.

Guaman warned Watson that the villagers are considering a new plan to file additional judgment enforcement actions in other countries to seize Chevron assets to force the company to abide by the rule of law. "Our people are dying because of Chevron's pollution, so we have no choice but to bring as much pressure to bear on the decision makers," he said.

That's putting it nicely. To Guaman and his followers, we say please continue to kick Watson's posterior until he and his cohorts are held fully accountable.

It is only a matter of time before Watson is either forced out of his job ,or forced to pay the full cost of the grotesque environmental catastrophe his company has visited on the people of Ecuador.

Chevron Executives Misused Millions of Shareholder Dollars To Bribe a Witness in Violation of U.S. Federal Law

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Tue, 30 May 2017 21:32:00 +0000

Reposted from Eye on the Amazon.

Whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, or offers or promises such person to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence the testimony under oath or affirmation of such first-mentioned person as a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding... or with intent to influence such person to absent himself therefrom; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.
18 U.S. Code § 201 – Bribery of public officials and witnesses

It may seem like this is stating the obvious, but it's a crime to bribe a witness to a U.S. federal court. Funny thing, though; Chevron has done just that, to the tune of $2 million dollars. Yet no one inside Chevron has demanded an explanation for this – until now. In advance of the company's annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, shareholders and members of the public are demanding that Chevron's Board of Directors determine just who authorized the payments of bribes to disgraced former Ecuadorian judge Alberto Guerra in exchange for his testimony in Chevron's retaliatory lawsuit against the affected Ecuadorians communities and their lawyers.

To recap, Chevron was found liable in 2011, after decades of legal battles, for $9.5 billion for having deliberately polluted the Ecuadorian Amazon by dumping over 16 billion gallons of toxic waste and causing a massive health epidemic which has costs well over a thousand lives to date. Rather than accept responsibility and pay for a cleanup, Chevron countersued the Ecuadorians and their lawyers and fabricated an elaborate lie alleging it was the victim of an injustice and that the Ecuadorian verdict against it was ghost-written by a judge that the Ecuadorian communities had bribed. Chevron won that separate case in a shockingly-biased trial and did so based primarily on the sworn testimony of known-liar Alberto Guerra. (For any readers wanting an extended review of the facts, please read this excellent post from our friends at EarthRights International.)

As we have written about before, Guerra was already seen as an unreliable witness at the time of the countersuit and even the presiding judge, Lewis Kaplan, acknowledged that he was a liar and corrupt. He noted that Guerra "often has been dishonest," and that he had "multiple" times in his professional history "accepted bribes," "lied," and "broken the law." And Kaplan also noted that "Guerra's willingness to accept and solicit bribes" among "other considerations, put his credibility in serious doubt, particular in light of the benefits he has obtained from Chevron." Yet, Kaplan allowed his testimony to be admitted. Guerra's testimony was central to Chevron's allegations and the trial court's findings. It was the only evidence of a scheme to bribe the presiding Ecuadorian Judge to rule against Chevron.

As described in the recent Amicus Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court prepared by EarthRights International, Chevron paid Guerra on multiple occasions:

In July 2012, Chevron sent Andres Rivero, one of its U.S. lawyers, and a private investigator to Ecuador – with $18,000 in a suitcase – to meet with Guerra. The cash was supposedly to buy Guerra's computer; Chevron hoped to find a draft of the final judgment, which Guerra claimed he had written. Recordings of the meeting show Rivero, the investigator, and Guerra negotiating a payment:

INV #5: You, let's say, tell us how much, how much.

GUERRA: Well, how much are you willing?

...

RIVERO: I'm an attorney, so then... How... for me it's, uh... I don't mind setting, uh, a, a starting figure right? Starting. Understand? Or, [INV #5] what do you think?

INV #5: Yes, Yes. We have twenty thousand dollars in the...

RIVERO: In hand.

INV #5: In hand, right?

GUERRA: Couldn't you add a few zeroes?

In January 2013, Chevron and Guerra signed a contract detailing the benefits Chevron would provide to Guerra and his family in exchange for Guerra testifying. The benefits were guaranteed for two years, with an option of renewal... The benefits Chevron agreed to pay Guerra were "compensation" and were separate from and "in addition" to "travel and other expenses" associated with testifying.

All told, since July 2012, Chevron had given Guerra at a minimum:

$432,000 in monthly payments;
$12,000 for household items;
$48,000 in cash in exchange for evidence;
A new computer;
Payment of all U.S. taxes;
Expenses for Guerra and his family to move to the U.S.;
Health insurance for Guerra and his family;
A car and car insurance; and
Payment for an immigration attorney for Guerra and his family, an attorney to represent Guerra in the US proceedings, an Ecuadorian attorney, a tax attorney, and an accountant.

Money well spent for Chevron. Or was it?

You might think Chevron's ongoing payments to Guerra would ensure he kept up his lies for Chevron, but Guerra's corruption was too much to keep hidden. When he took the stand in a related arbitration proceeding in 2015, he admitted that he lied under oath in Kaplan's court! In fact, he confessed that he misled the court about the bribe and about having arranged to ghostwrite the judgment. He also admitted he did so specifically to get a larger payout from Chevron. This put Chevron in serious trouble as it became even more clear that the company paid him specifically to lie for it.

When pressed about the fact that Chevron bribed Guerra and didn't even get what it paid for, CEO John Watson might try to defend his actions by claiming that Chevron didn't know Guerra was going to lie. Yet, Chevron's lawyers coached him in preparation for the trial for 53 days! Of course, Chevron and its lawyers at the corporate hatchet firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher knew Guerra was going to lie. They had been negotiating a price for this lies for years as the ChevronPit blog has pointed out:

Chevron lawyers led by Randy Mastro then coached Guerra for 53 consecutive days before he took the stand in Kaplan's courtroom. "Money talks, but gold screams," Guerra told Chevron's lawyers when he negotiated his "fee" for testifying.

Now Chevron faces an enforcement action in Canada, where the Ecuadorians continue to pursue the company's assets to finally pay for a cleanup. There will be another hearing in that case this October and Chevron will have the opportunity to explain Guerra's contradictory testimony in another court. I have a feeling it will do almost anything to avoid that embarrassment, however. In the meantime, CEO Watson and senior legal counsel Hewitt Pate will have to explain to shareholders how bribing a federal witness to commit fraud in U.S. federal court is an appropriate use of millions of dollars of shareholder funds. For a company already known worldwide as a gross polluter and environmental criminal, Watson has achieved the seemingly impossible by making Chevron's reputation even worse.

Send your message to Chevron's Board of Directors today and demand they hold CEO Watson accountable for his illegal actions

P.S. To learn more about Chevron's retaliatory legal attacks on the Ecuadorians, we recommend you watch our Donny Rico video series by Pulitzer Prize-winning animator Mark Fiore.

Chevron Creating Fake News To Hide Environmental Crimes in Ecuador's Amazon

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Tue, 23 May 2017 15:30:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

Chevron is again trying to spread fake news to try to distract attention from its environmental crimes and sham remediation in Ecuador, where the company is on the hook for a $9.5 billion liability and faces potential criminal prosecution for presenting fabricated evidence to a U.S. court.

Last week, we reported how dismissed Fortune reporter Roger Parloff resurfaced at Yahoo Finance with a completely unbalanced article on the case to help absolve Chevron of responsibility for the billions of gallons of toxic oil waste it admitted to dumping into the waterways and lands of indigenous people in Ecuador. (Here is a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron as found by three layers of courts in Ecuador, where the company insisted the trial be held.)

Now we see the right-wing blog Hot Air is also blowing major hot air of its own in service of the Chevron propaganda machine.

Hot Air, which is connected to the Koch Brothers funding network outlined brilliantly by Jane Mayer in her book Dark Money, claimed in a recent blog that Chevron is the subject of a "shakedown" by the villagers and their lawyers. The blog then quotes none other than Parloff's unbalanced article published by Yahoo Finance in support.

Both Parloff and Hot Air used the occasion to promote Chevron's opposition brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in an appeal of a bogus "racketeering" decision that the company obtained from controversial New York trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan. That judgment resulted from a one-sided proceeding termed a "Dickensian farce" by one of the nation's leading lawyers.

Kaplan, who repeatedly bent over backwards to help Chevron, failed to disclose that he held investments in the oil company during the trial.

Chevron's latest court brief in the U.S. has little relevance to the company's ongoing liability in the case given that the judgment is being enforced against company assets in Canada and Brazil.

Both Parloff in his Yahoo Finance article and Hot Air downplayed the Canada enforcement action, where the affected communities recently won a unanimous decision from the country's Supreme Court. Canada is where Chevron is likely to be held accountable for its toxic dumping in Ecuador after two decades of forum shopping in courts spanning three continents.

(For a comprehensive history of Chevron's subterfuge in the case, see this appellate brief submitted by Steven Donziger, the longtime lawyer for the Ecuadorians and a primary target of the company's attacks. Here is a blog from a lawyer at Earth Rights International explaining Chevron's fabricated evidence and illegal witness payments. Here is an explosive new report and press release that outlines Chevron's attempts to manipulate U.S. courts with false evidence.)

Both Parloff and the blog also ignore critical new evidence that shows Chevron "won" its decision from Kaplan after it illegally bribed a witness with at least $2 million in cash and benefits. The admittedly corrupt Chevron witness, Alberto Guerra, later admitted under oath that he lied about several critical issues in Kaplan's court while a forensic examination proved the falsity of Chevron's fake news that the judgment against it in Ecuador was "ghostwritten".

The world knows that Chevron produces and refines lots of oil. But few know the extent of its investments to manipulate public opinion to hide its wrongdoing in Ecuador and elsewhere. Parloff and Hot Air are vehicles for this strategy.

In the Ecuador case, Chevron has a long history of orchestrating payments to bloggers and using small right-wing websites to try to launder its propaganda. A few years ago, a pro-Chevron blogger named Alex Thorne tried to pass himself off as a legitimate journalist when he sent intimidating emails to funders of the environmental group Amazon Watch, which supports the Ecuadorian villagers.

Thorne also ran a website designed to attack Karen Hinton, the highly effective U.S. spokesperson for the Ecuadorian villagers. It turned out that while Thorne was targeting the Ecuadorians as a "journalist" he actually was married to a Chevron employee and being paid by the company.

For years Chevron has used the notorious public relations operative Sam Singer, who hails from the Roger Stone school of political mischief, to funnel money to bloggers to parrot its fake talking points. See here for background on the Chevron dirty tricks operation.

When Chevron couldn't impose its will on the small California town of Richmond -- where a catastrophic fire at a Chevron refinery in 2012 forced 15,000 residents to seek medical attention -- the company started its own local on-line website and called it The Richmond Times to make it look like a legitimate news outlet.

The hot air coming from the Hot Air blog on Chevron's growing problems in Ecuador is just more of the same.

Journalist Roger Parloff Blows It Again Over Chevron's Ecuador Pollution Case

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Sat, 20 May 2017 00:35:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

Journalist Roger Parloff, who recently left Fortune magazine, has resurfaced as a writer for Yahoo Finance. But one thing that hasn't changed is his dishonest and unbalanced reporting in favor of Chevron in the historic Ecuador pollution case where the company faces a huge liability for its toxic dumping in the rainforest.

Parloff recently published a story on the case Yahoo Finance that completely ignored critical new evidence that devastates Chevron's defenses, including that its star witness admitted that he repeatedly lied on the stand after being paid $2 million by the company. The villagers who won the $9.5 billion judgment are currently enforcing it against Chevron's assets in Canada and Brazil. But Parloff also refused to explain the huge significance of legal developments in those two countries -- developments whose importance dwarfs developments in the U.S. phase of the proceedings.

As background, courts in Ecuador where Chevron insisted the trial be held found the company guilty of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste in Ecuador's Amazon region, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak cancer confirmed by several independent studies. Company officials led by CEO John Watson refused to pay the judgment and threatened the villagers with a "lifetime of litigation" if they persisted in pursuing their claims.

(See this New York Times story for background and this summary of the overwhelming evidence against the company. Here is the Ecuador Supreme Court decision issued in 2013 affirming Chevron's liability.)

Parloff's article focused largely on a narrow appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by the villagers and their lawyer, Steven Donziger, over a retaliatory "racketeering" judgment obtained by Chevron in the United States from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. That ruling, issued after the judge refused to seat a jury, was based on evidence fabricated by Chevron and presented via a company witness who claimed with no corroborating evidence that the Ecuador judgment was "ghostwritten" by the plaintiffs.

The sad spectacle of the Kaplan judgment -- where a U.S. trial judge tried to reverse a decision by a foreign country's judiciary -- is so bizarre and unprecedented that it has little relevance regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court decides to do. Neither Kaplan nor the justices have the power to block enforcement actions in Canada and Brazil where all of Chevron's evidentiary problems with its lying witness will be on full display.

Already, in a very bad sign for Chevron, Canada's Supreme Court rejected the company's attempt to use Kaplan's false "findings" to block an asset seizure action filed by the Ecuadorians targeting some of the company's oil fields, refineries, and other assets in that country.

Kaplan's judgment also was based on a "Dickensian farce" of a proceeding in the words of prominent attorney John Keker, who withdrew his representation of Donziger in protest. Kaplan allowed Chevron's "evidence" to be fully presented while he barred all evidence of Chevron's toxic dumping and fraud in Ecuador that was used to find the company liable. He also excluded Donziger's counterclaims that outline Chevron's environmental crimes, sham remediation, and attempts to harass and silence company critics.

The latest U.S. Supreme Court appeal that attracted Parloff's attention will present an important test for the justices. The court should of course toss the Kaplan decision because of the false evidence and a myriad of other legal problems, including the chilling implications of letting wealthy corporations use the RICO statute to try to silence human rights victims and their lawyers. (For summaries and links to the various briefs, see here, here, and here.)

In his article for Yahoo Finance, Parloff also ignored the fact that 19 international law scholars and 17 civil advocacy groups have urged the high court to reverse Kaplan's decision. Or that Earth Rights International, probably the leading environmental justice legal shop in the country, has condemned the Kaplan ruling as one based on illegal witness payments and other malfeasance.

Parloff instead used the platform of Yahoo Finance to reinforce Chevron's tired arguments designed to "demonize" Donziger who for years has led the battle against the company's fraud and corruption. (See this article in Rolling Stone.) Parloff also failed to mention that Chevron paid $2 million to the discredited witness who falsely claimed the judgment was written by the plaintiffs.

That Chevron witness, Alberto Guerra, admitted under oath in a separate proceeding that he lied about several critical issues before Kaplan. Separately, a new forensic analysis by one of the world's leading computer experts proved Guerra's "ghostwriting" story was false. Yet Chevron, Kaplan, and a federal appellate court continue to credit the Guerra testimony, casting a mighty large stain on the reputation of our federal judiciary.

This information about Chevron's use of Guerra as its paid stooge has been readily available in public legal filings for years. It also was documented meticulously in an explosive new 33-page report called How U.S. Courts Got It Wrong In Chevron's Amazon Pollution Case. The report, released last week, demonstrates how Chevron's false evidence and fraud have infected the U.S. legal proceedings.

Again, Parloff ignored all of it.

When at Fortune, Parloff consistently wrote articles parroting the points in Chevron's legal arguments while squelching letters of dissent pointing out deficiencies in his reporting. Already, there are signs he has tried to delete comments critical of his article on Yahoo Finance.

One of those comments was posted by Aaron Page, a lawyer for the villagers. He offered this incisive comment about Parloff's apparent attempt to launder Chevron talking points through a legitimate news outlet:

This reporter [Parloff] is the master of hyperventilation. He was a critical asset of Chevron as it fanned the flames of outrage and indignation in the early days of the RICO case. Most of the allegations from those days were quietly dropped from the case (like Chevron's "demand" for an impartial jury to hear the case was dropped). To fill the gaps, Chevron... procured false testimony of a "bribe" and "ghost-writing" from an obviously corrupt individual.

Page continues:

In other words, the RICO judgment is UNQUESTIONABLY founded on false evidence. Yet Kaplan, the Second Circuit, and now Parloff couldn't care less. Their hit job on Donziger is complete.

For more background on the history of dishonest pro-Chevron journalism offered by Parloff and two other legal journalists who repeatedly fanned outrage against Donziger and the Ecuadorian villagers, see this excellent blog by Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch.

With this track record, the editors at Yahoo Finance might want to hire an extra fact checker to scrutinize Parloff's copy whenever he submits a story about the Ecuador environmental case.

Supreme Court Faces Major Test With Chevron's Facially Corrupt RICO Case

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Tue, 16 May 2017 22:58:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

An explosive new report that details how U.S. courts endorsed Chevron's fabricated evidence in its facially corrupt RICO case against Ecuadorian indigenous villagers presents a major test for the U.S. Supreme Court. (See this press release summarizing the report.)

The 33-page report -- called How U.S. Courts Got It Wrong In Chevron's Amazon Pollution Case -- is absolutely devastating for Chevron's bogus civil "racketeering" judgment against Ecuadorian villagers and their counsel, Steven Donziger. That judgment was issued in 2014 by U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan following a unanimous decision a year earlier by Ecuador's highest court that Chevron was liable for $9.5 billion in environmental damages.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the opportunity to reverse what a leading commentator calls the "facially corrupt" Chevron RICO case. See here for a Huffington Post analysis by Aaron Page, an experienced human rights attorney. Page helped write the new report which rebuts in great detail 12 false or distorted "findings" by Judge Kaplan that were rubber-stamped by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court tin New York that oversees Kaplan.

The background of the Amazon pollution case is illustrative of Chevron's abject bad faith in dealing with its pollution problem in Ecuador and the utter failure of U.S. courts to stop the company from abusing the civil justice system to evade paying for the harm it caused. Thousands of people in the affected region have either died or face an imminent risk of death as cancer rates have skyrocketed in the area where Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste.

After the Ecuadorian villagers originally filed their claims in the U.S., Chevron had insisted the trial take place in Ecuador and had accepted jurisdiction there. The company at the time filed 14 sworn affidavits before a U.S. judge praising the fairness of Ecuador's courts. Chevron clearly figured it could engineer a political dismissal of the case in Ecuador, which is exactly what the company tried to do but failed.

Then, as the trial in Ecuador proceeded and the evidence against Chevron mounted, the company started to trash the very court system that it previously had praised. Chevron officials threatened the villagers with a "lifetime of litigation" if they persisted in pursuing the case. "We will fight this until hell freezes over, and then fight it out on the ice," warned Charles James, Chevron's General Counsel.

Chevron then vowed never to pay the judgment and launched a "demonization" campaign against Donziger and the villagers, of which the RICO case was a central component. To attack Donziger and his colleagues, Chevron even hired the same public relations firm that ran the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign.

In what can only be described as a shocking example of American judicial imperialism, Kaplan let Chevron's army of private lawyers commandeer his courtroom to attack the Ecuadorians and their counsel to try to taint the Ecuador judgment so the company could evade paying the judgment. Despite its surface swagger, Chevron displayed real cowardice when it came time to actually put its RICO evidence to the test.

Company lawyers apparently had so little confidence in their "evidence" that they dropped all money damages on the eve of trial to avoid a jury of impartial fact finders. Also at Chevron's insistence, Kaplan prohibited all evidence related to Chevron's contamination and fraudulent cover-up in Ecuador from being mentioned in open court.

The entire Kaplan RICO proceeding was akin to a "Dickensian farce" as described by prominent lawyer John Keker, who withdrew from defending the case in protest of Kaplan's biased behavior. The Chevron RICO strategy against Donziger was in fact part and parcel of the company's own racketeering scheme to undermine the valid Ecuador judgment.

In fact, when Donziger brilliantly counterclaimed Chevron before Kaplan with overwhelming evidence of the company's crimes and fraud in Ecuador, the judge predictably refused to let those claims be litigated. Only Chevron's fabricated and distorted evidence was allowed to be heard; the real evidence from the villagers and Donziger was barred.

This was judicial farce, pure and simple -- what the villagers describe as a "mockery of justice" from beginning to end. To get a feel for Kaplan's inappropriate behavior and outright hostility toward the Ecuadorian villagers, read this fascinating account from Harvard Law School graduate Marissa Vahring who worked on the trial team defending the RICO case. Here's another account of Chevron's corruption from a lawyer who works at the environmental group Earth Rights International.

The latest report -- How U.S. Courts Got It Wrong -- destroys what little is left of Kaplan's and Chevron's credibility in the RICO matter.

The new report explains that Kaplan's "findings" were based primarily on discredited testimony from an admittedly corrupt witness paid $2 million by Chevron to falsely claim the plaintiffs offered a bribe to the Ecuador trial judge.The witness, Alberto Guerra, later admitted under oath that he lied on key issues before Kaplan and a forensic report scientifically debunked his testimony.

Guerra also admitted paying and accepting bribes when he practiced law in Ecuador. "Money talks, but gold screams," Guerra told Chevron lawyers when he was negotiating his rich compensation package in exchange for becoming a company stooge. Yet Kaplan "credited" Guerra's testimony and the Second Circuit -- as is typical of appellate courts in most cases but should not have happened in this extraordinary situation -- deferred to the trial judge on this point without any independent analysis.

It later turned out that during the RICO trial, despite multiple calls for his recusal for bias, Kaplan hid the fact he had investments in Chevron. On two occasions, the Second Circuit held hearings on motions to remove Kaplan from the trial without this critical information that the judge refused to disclose. The big picture is that corporate corruption permeated Kaplan's federal courtroom to such a degree that it was almost too much for the appellate court to acknowledge, much less address.

Page stated the RICO case now presents a major test for the integrity of our highest court. "The simple question is whether the Supreme Court stand with the rule of law, or will it stand with Chevron's attacks on the rule of law," he said. Already, 19 law scholars and 17 environmental and human rights groups have weighed in with briefs urging the Court to reverse Kaplan's RICO decision.

Even if the Supreme Court declines review of Judge Kaplan's legal fiasco -- which is possible given that the Court accepts only about 75 petitions for review each year out of the thousands submitted -- the historical record of Chevron's lies and fraud is clear as the villagers proceed with asset seizure actions against the company in Canada and elsewhere. Already, Canada's Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the villagers while Brazil's courts have refused to block a separate enforcement action.

It will be interesting to watch Chevron lawyers react if they are forced to put Guerra on the stand in Canada without Judge Kaplan there to protect his credibility. Even Chevron's own lawyers might be forced by Canada's courts to explain their roles in coaching Guerra prior to his untruthful testimony in the RICO case.

Unlike Kaplan, who did all he could to rig the RICO trial in Chevron's favor, a trial judge in Toronto will assess the full evidence in an enforcement trial with neither fear nor favor. For Chevron, a neutral arbiter assessing its fabricated and distorted evidence is a recipe for a litigation disaster.

Will the Supreme Court Strike Down Chevron's Facially Corrupt RICO Case?

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Tue, 16 May 2017 17:45:00 +0000

Reposted from the Huffington Post.

Okay folks, the briefs are in. (And online, except Chevron's opposition, which I've seen but which Chevron seems to be hiding from the internet.) Our side will still file a reply, but nonetheless it's go time on the petition to the Supreme Court to review the shameful U.S. lower court judgments in Chevron's unapologetically corrupt RICO attack on its Ecuadorian contamination victims and their lawyer, Steven Donziger.

The Donziger/Ecuadorian brief is here. Necessarily, its arguments are limited to the narrow legal grounds that justify the Supreme Court’s discretionary intervention at this point. (The Supreme Court receives around 8,000 petitions each year and agrees to hear on 60-80 of them, or less than 1%). Nonetheless, it sets out two strong reasons for review: (1) the disturbing implications of allowing a losing party in foreign litigation like Chevron to use the RICO statute to launch a collateral attack in its "chosen forum," i.e. its home-country courts, and (2) of allowing a party to sue in RICO solely for "injunctive" relief. This latter argument is significant because a party can demand injunctive relief without having to present its case to a jury. In this case, Chevron dropped all its money damages claims on the eve of trial so that only Judge Kaplan (the notoriously biased district court judge who stated on the record that Chevron was "a company of considerable importance to our economy" and that the Ecuador case was the product of the "imagination" of "American lawyers") would have the power to decide the case, not a jury.

Subsequently, a variety of scholars and civil society groups filed briefs outlining broader and yet more disturbing implications of allowing Chevron’s collateral attack to stand. For example, one group of leading organizations such as Friends of the Earth stated:

[We] regularly engage in First Amendment-protected activities similar to those that were found to be predicate acts under RICO in this case. [If the case is allowed to go forward, our] exercise of [our] First Amendment rights of free speech, association, and petitioning government will be severely chilled by the very real possibility that [we] will have to mount costly defenses to retaliatory litigation brought by deep-pocketed corporations whose conduct Amici publicly oppose.

Another group of organizations took a closer look at the deeply corrupt nature of the "evidence" that Chevron used to support its core claims in the case, such as the claim that there was a bribery agreement – a claim solely supported by the testimony of a "fact" witness, Alberto Guerra, to whom Chevron directed over $2 million in cash and benefits. (Paying fact witnesses for their testimony is illegal.) See more here, here, here, and here.

The Republic of Ecuador also filed a brief condemning the process of U.S. courts, in particular highlighting how U.S. courts repeatedly (but not surprisingly) misunderstood Ecuadorian law and procedure. In his 500-page opinion, the U.S. trial judge went on and on about how this or that was a "fraud" on the Ecuadorian court, under Ecuadorian law, that somehow required heroic efforts by a U.S. judge to step in and save the day. Please. Ecuador’s Supreme Court, the real expert in Ecuadorian law, considered the exact same allegations and summed up the reality of the situation:

[Chevron] never demonstrated fraud, which it has been claiming without any legal support. We reiterate that it has not proven any omission or violation of procedure that would give rise to the nullity sought. [Chevron’s] incessant harping in this regard departs from procedural good faith.

Just as important as all the briefs is the recent release of a damning new Report highlighting the corrupt foundations of Chevron's RICO case (e.g., its reliance on Guerra despite sign after sign of his corruption and falsity), and providing detailed responses to all the various secondary smears and allegations in the "demonization" campaign (Chevron's own words) that Chevron used to drive hysteria and momentum in order to get the case over the finish line.

The report paints an ugly picture of U.S. courts embracing, tacitly adopting, or even just tolerating extreme corruption and foul play by a U.S. company in its blatantly self-serving and out-of-bounds legal attack against an historic human rights case. Why would U.S. courts do this? There are surely some long and complicated answers to this question, but also some simple ones. Consider this quote by the district judge (Lewis A. Kaplan, effectively chosen by Chevron to hear the case), stated out loud from the bench in the opening days of the RICO case:

[W]e are dealing here with 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 because these folks [the Ecuadorians] have attached it in Singapore or wherever else [as part of enforcing their judgment].

It's just dumbfounding how biased this is – and just ridiculous. That the judge's desire to protect Chevron could be driven to such levels of ridiculousness speaks to the depth of the bias. Or consider this quote, also from the bench in a related proceeding before the RICO case even began:

The imagination of American lawyers is just without parallel in the world. It is our one absolutely overwhelming comparative advantage against the rest of the world, apart from medicine. You know, we used to do a lot of other things. Now we cure people and we kill them with interrogatories. It’s a sad pass. But that’s where we are. And Mr. Donziger [with the Ecuador judgment] is trying to become the next big thing in fixing the balance of payments deficit. I got it from the beginning.

Boy, you couldn't see where this case was going, could you?

Where it went was a place just as ugly as these quotes suggest – in fact, uglier, because as detailed in the amicus and in the new report, Chevron sunk to new depths by paying Guerra massive sums of money to invent a "bribery" claim, and Judge Kaplan bought it.

What we are left with is a patently disgraceful picture of a swaggering U.S. company which (1) engineered a dismissal of environmental claims to Ecuador, (2) didn't like the result it got in Ecuador, (3) came running back to its home country courts for protection; and (4) despite a mountain of international and domestic legal principles that should have prevented it, got the U.S. courts to jump to its aid. Specifically, it got a "freestanding determination of the facts" (Chevron's words) that is unconnected from any specific legal relief but that gives Chevron a new weapon to wave around in enforcement jurisdictions (as the Ecuadorians, as they should and must, go about enforcing their judgment in various countries around the world).

Ultimately, the RICO judgment should not stop any of these enforcement actions, because those non-U.S. courts are perfectly capable of coming to their own views on Chevron’s bogus "fraud" claims and are not going to roll over to corrupt/paid evidence the way U.S. courts did. But it will certainly give Chevron yet more delay, in a case which has already gone on for nearly 25 years while each year more and more victims die and new generations of children are poisoned

The Supreme Court has one last chance to stop Chevron’s self-serving legal circus from becoming law of the land and a stain on U.S. legal history. It has a chance to do something to help the underlying human tragedy.

The odds are overwhelmingly against review as a general matter, but we must still hope.

17 Environmental Groups Criticize Chevron Before Supreme Court for Faking Evidence

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Fri, 12 May 2017 17:51:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

Seventeen prominent environmental and human groups have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to criticize Chevron and its legal team for fabricating evidence in the historic Ecuador pollution case and for violating the Free Speech rights of the company's critics.

The filing of the latest "friend of the court" briefs (see here and here) from the civil society groups is profoundly important. It is another example of how Chevron continues to lose support in the Ecuador case after being hit with a historic $9.5 billion environmental judgment in 2013 for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak of cancer. That judgment was affirmed unanimously by Ecuador's Supreme Court in the forum where Chevron had accepted jurisdiction.

The amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court underscore why Chevron officials and company lawyers might be subject to sanctions, or even criminal prosecution, for intentionally presenting fraudulent evidence and for illegally paying for favorable witness testimony.

The latest briefs urge the justices to reverse a decision from a retaliatory "racketeering" (or RICO) case filed by Chevron in New York before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan targeting the villagers and their lawyers. Chevron tried to use its false evidence in that case to undermine the Ecuador judgment and to silence the company's growing chorus of critics, including some of its own shareholders who have challenged company management over its mishandling of the case.

Called a mockery of justice by the villagers, the Chevron "racketeering" case had no real legal basis and was unprecedented in the 241-year history of the United States, according to another amicus brief submitted by 19 law scholars and this appeal by New York human rights attorney Steven Donziger.

Those briefs demonstrate that prior to Chevron's case before Kaplan, a U.S. court had never before permitted a party that had lost a judgment in a foreign court where it had accepted jurisdiction to come home to collaterally attack that judgment -- a recipe for judicial chaos and unending forum shopping as litigations jump across countries and continents with no final resolution, as the law scholars emphasized.

The law scholars told the justices that Kaplan's decision not only violates international law, but puts the entire U.S. government in violation of international law by letting a solitary America trial judge try to dictate to all foreign judges from all countries how they should rule on a case. Kaplan tried just that by purporting to block the villagers from collecting on their judgment anywhere in the world.

The Ecuador judgment was affirmed in 2013 after three layers of courts in Ecuador found that Chevron had dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the rainforest, decimating indigenous groups and poisoning natural water sources relied on by tens of thousands of people. (For a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron, see here.) After betraying its promise to pay any adverse judgment in Ecuador, Chevron filed the "racketeering" case and saw Kaplan make what can only be described as a bizarre ruling from his Manhattan courtroom.

Kaplan ruled that as a general matter Ecuador's entire judiciary was "illegal" and therefore incapable of producing valid court judgments. He did this after refusing to consider any of the voluminous scientific evidence that was relied on by Ecuador's courts to find Chevron liable. The weakness of the decision is that it is utterly unenforceable in other countries. More to the point, it is a shocking example of American judicial imperialism.

Kaplan's decision predictably has been rejected in Canada, where courts have given the villagers the green light to try to seize Chevron's assets with the unanimous backing of the country's Supreme Court. Courts in Brazil are also allowing an enforcement action against Chevron's assets in that country to proceed. It is only a matter of time before Chevron is forced to pay up in full given that it has an estimated $15 billion of assets in Canada and another $3 billion in Brazil.

One of the new amicus briefs, filed by Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network, attacked Chevron for illegally paying an admittedly corrupt witness $2 million in cash and benefits to claim that the Ecuador judgment was "ghostwritten" by the plaintiffs. That witness, the former Ecuadorian judge Alberto Guerra, offered no corroborating evidence for his claim and later admitted under oath that he lied about key parts of the story in Kaplan's court.

The U.S. federal appellate court that oversees Kaplan, in reflexively affirming his ruling, ignored the undisputed evidence that Guerra lied and that his ghostwriting story has been completely debunked by new scientific evidence that became available after the end of the RICO trial.

Paul Paz y Mino, Associate Director of Amazon Watch, offered this powerful comment in a press release about the need for the Supreme Court to review the flawed U.S. court decisions:

It is imperative that the Supreme Court take action to stop what might be one of the most disturbing abuses of our civil justice system in history. To avoid compensating its victims in Ecuador, Chevron bribed a witness, fabricated evidence, and committed crimes and fraud before a U.S. court.

Erich Pica, from the U.S. environmental group Friends of the Earth, also criticized Chevron for using the RICO case as a pretext to intimidate company critics by issuing them subpoenas seeking privileged documents. Chevron served the subpoenas on dozens of environmental groups, bloggers, journalists, consultants and lawyers. All the recipients had tried to the help the Ecuadorian villagers or expose some aspect of Chevron's wrongdoing in Ecuador.

Pica said:

Corporate accountability advocates must not be at risk from legal action by U.S. corporations simply for expressing their First Amendment rights to free speech. As it stands, this [RICO] decision endangers the very foundation of human rights and environmental advocacy. That is why Friends of the Earth has filed this brief along with others in the environmental and human rights community.

Chevron suffered another blow when the 19 law scholars also filed an amicus brief in support of the Ecuadorian communities. Another prominent environmental group, Earth Rights International, published a riveting account of how Chevron tried to sabotage the Ecuador trial via corruption and improper pressure. Kaplan ignored evidence of Chevron's corruption in the Ecuador trial as well.

The Ecuador pollution matter clearly has become groundbreaking litigation in the global corporate accountability movement. It threatens the business model of the entire fossil fuel industry which relies to a shocking degree on externalizing its pollution costs to keep profits flowing at artificially high levels. As Chevron's profits gush, cancer rates in Ecuador's Amazon soar.

The Ecuador pollution case is also a major test for the U.S. judiciary. That judiciary thus far deserves an abject failing grade for lending its stamp of approval to Chevron's corruption and Kaplan's abuse of judicial power.

Compared to Ecuador's judiciary, which had the institutional fortitude to resist Chevron's attempts to corrupt the proceedings, U.S. courts thus far have bent over backwards to bless Chevron's bribery of a witness and other outrageous misconduct. It's a sad pass to say the least.

The Ecuador pollution litigation now presents a major test for the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices can choose either to step up and defend the rule of law, or allow the egregious injustice committed in the RICO matter to continue to stain our nation and its court system.

Chevron's Illegal Payments To Witnesses Should Prompt Supreme Court To Reconsider Case

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Sun, 07 May 2017 00:49:00 +0000

Reposted from EarthRights International.

For nearly three decades, Ecuadorian communities have tried to hold Texaco (now Chevron) accountable for the company's legacy of oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The saga has stretched across the globe, across multiple court rooms and tribunals, and yet justice for the Ecuadorian victims remains elusive. This week, we told a side of this saga that hasn't really been heard. On behalf of our friends at Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network, we filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court that details the illegal and unethical tactics Chevron and its lawyers used to try to obstruct judicial proceedings in Ecuador and obtain favorable testimony in the U.S. proceedings to support its retaliatory suit against the Ecuadorian victims and their lawyers.

I can't do justice to the complex and multifaceted history of the Chevron/Ecuador saga in a blog post, but here's a basic recap of how things got to where they are now: Ecuadorian villagers first filed suit against Texaco, whose operations in Ecuador were marked by egregious disrespect for local communities and their environment, in federal court in New York in 1993. After nearly 10 years of arguing over which court should hear the dispute, Texaco (which became a part of Chevron) convinced the court the case should be dismissed and heard in Ecuador instead, praising the fairness of the Ecuadorian judiciary. In 2003, the Ecuadorians refiled the case against Chevron in Ecuador. After years of litigation, the Ecuadorian court ruled in favor of the communities in 2011, issuing a multi-billion dollar judgment against Chevron for the devastation its operations left behind. Chevron appealed the decision and the appellate court, and Ecuador's highest court, both upheld the verdict ordering Chevron to pay to clean up the mess it left behind.

Sounds like that should be the end of the story, right? Hardly. Chevron, which no longer had assets in Ecuador, refused to pay. Instead, Chevron launched a retaliatory campaign against Ecuador, the Ecuadorians, their lawyers, and a wide range of other organizations and activists who had supported them. Chevron filed an international arbitration claim against the Government of Ecuador – before the Ecuadorian court had even issued its decision – alleging the judicial proceedings over its pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon violated the company's rights as an investor. (Under a treaty between the U.S. and Ecuador known as a "Bilateral Investment Treaty," foreign corporations investing in Ecuador can have investment disputes heard in front of a panel of private arbitrators.)

Chevron also returned to the U.S. and filed suit in federal court in New York, asking the court to prohibit the Ecuadorians from enforcing any judgment issued by Ecuador anywhere in the world. Despite the fact that Chevron chose to have this case heard in Ecuador, over the objections of the Ecuadorians and their lawyers, Chevron now claimed the Ecuadorian courts were corrupt and incapable of issuing an impartial judgment fit for recognition and enforcement in our courts. The suit claimed the Ecuadorian victims, their lawyers, activists, and even Chevron's own shareholders were all a part of a massive conspiracy and a "public pressure campaign" to try to force Chevron to settle fraudulent claims.

The suit also brought claims under the racketeering and organized crime statute – known as RICO – alleging the Ecuadorians lawyers had procured the Ecuadorian judgment by fraudulent means. It's worth noting what Chevron did not argue – it never tried to show the Ecuadorian court got it wrong and Chevron wasn't responsible for the massive contamination. The RICO proceedings were utterly bizarre, defying all assumptions about how our legal system is supposed to work. (I recommend reading Marissa's description of what it was like when she volunteered on the trial before coming to work for us.) But in 2014, following a very strange bench trial, the judge ruled for Chevron.

The Ecuadorians and their lawyers are now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal. The brief we filed this week, which asks the Court to grant certiorari and hear their case, focuses on the facts that the trial court didn't consider: specifically, Chevron's misconduct in Ecuador and in the U.S. proceedings. In Ecuador, Chevron tampered with evidence of pollution, lied to the Ecuadorian court, paid millions of dollars to avoid damaging testimony, and sought to entrap a judge in a fabricated bribery scandal, creating the appearance of corruption in order to prevent enforcement in case it lost the case in Ecuador. Chevron continued to use dirty tactics in the U.S. proceedings, which ultimately led the trial court to make critical factual errors – errors we now know were simply wrong.

Central to Chevron's case below was its claim that the Ecuadorians' legal team had offered (but never paid) a bribe to the Ecuadorian judge to let them "ghostwrite" the judgment. Despite virtually limitless discovery, including access to the Ecuadorians' lawyers' litigation files, documents, hard drives, and even a personal diary, Chevron's lawyers never produced any direct evidence – no draft judgment, nor any communications by Petitioners evidencing a ghostwriting or bribery scheme.

Instead, all it could produce was the testimony of Alberto Guerra, an admittedly corrupt former judge who had previously tried to solicit a bribe from Chevron, and who came with a multi-million-dollar price tag. The trial court's decision relied heavily on Guerra's testimony and it is the only evidence for numerous conclusions. But Guerra subsequently admitted to lying on the stand during the trial about central facts of his bribery and ghostwriting allegations, and much of the "corroborating evidence" that supposedly supported Guerra's bought-and-paid for testimony has been refuted in later proceedings.

Chevron's conduct below shows why courts normally don't hear cases that seek, as Chevron did here, to have a court preemptively bar enforcement of a foreign judgment, before the winners have even tried to enforce it. Litigation would never end because the loser could always challenge a ruling in another forum. Indeed, if that's now allowed, then Chevron's misdeeds here – for example, payment of illegal gratuities and bribes to witnesses in exchange for favorable testimony, which violate U.S. law – could easily give the Ecuadorians and their lawyers a basis to turn to the courts in yet another country to file suit attacking the U.S. trial court's judgment as procured by fraud and unenforceable.

We don't know whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case. But this saga is far from over regardless of whether the Court hears it – the Ecuadorians are still pursuing enforcement proceedings in Canada, and the arbitration panel hearing Chevron's case against Ecuador has yet to rule. We can't help but wonder whether Chevron and its attorneys at Gibson Dunn may one day soon find themselves in the position of having to answer for their wrongdoing in these proceedings.

Chevron's False Evidence in Ecuador Now Before U.S. Supreme Court

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 20:26:00 +0000

Reposted from The Chevron Pit.

Chevron's false evidence used to fraudulently cover up its legal responsibility for a $12 billion pollution judgment in Ecuador has been put before the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a real test of the High Court's own ability to police lower court judges who get involved in judicial corruption.

The filing by Steven Donziger, the longtime U.S. lawyer for the affected rainforest communities, is the latest chapter in the campaign to hold the oil giant accountable for dumping billions of gallons of oil waste and causing a humanitarian crisis in the rainforest. Chevron lost the case in Ecuador, leading to a $12 billion judgment that is currently being enforced in Canada.

The company retaliated against Donziger and his clients by filing a civil "racketeering" (RICO) case in U.S. court before a judge who clearly was licking his chops to send a message to the courts of Ecuador and the rest of the developing world to keep their paws off a powerful U.S. oil company -- even if meant accepting distorted, untruthful, and corrupt evidence.

From a new press release on the filing:

Ecuadorian rainforest villagers and their longtime U.S. human rights lawyer have presented proof of Chevron's bribes, false evidence, and fraud to the U.S. Supreme Court as part of a petition to overturn an unprecedented RICO decision by controversial U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan.

The petition to the U.S. Supreme Court points out that the RICO decision in favor of Chevron is the product of falsified evidence and judicial bias by the trial judge, the aforementioned Mr. Kaplan. After repeatedly signaling his support for Chevron, Kaplan refused to seat a jury and let Chevron drop all damages claims on the eve of trial to prevent a group of impartial fact finders from deciding the case.

Chevron's false evidence included testimony from an admittedly corrupt Ecuadorian witness, Alberto Guerra. Chevron paid Guerra a $2 million bribe, including $38,000 in cash out of a backpack, to become its homegrown patsy. At the time, he had been making $500 per month.

Chevron lawyers led by Randy Mastro then coached Guerra for 53 consecutive days before he took the stand in Kaplan's courtroom. "Money talks, but gold screams," Guerra told Chevron's lawyers when he negotiated his "fee" for testifying. Chevron also gave Guerra health care, a car, an immigration lawyer, and paid his taxes after he was moved to the U.S.

Needless to say, having enriched himself at Chevron's expense, Guerra had virtually no credibility when he took the stand in Kaplan's courtroom. What little he had disappeared completely when he blatantly lied under oath under the bright lights, as was evident to most observers.

Even though he was prepped meticulously by Chevron, Guerra could not keep his story straight. He claimed the villagers arranged for a bribe to the trial judge so they could write the judgment against Chevron. But that story fell apart when a forensic examination of the judge's office computer showed he wrote the judgment by saving it as a Word document at least 480 times in the weeks leading up to its issuance. Guerra had claimed it was given to the judge on a flash drive.

No corroborating evidence ever emerged that a bribe of the judge occurred.

Guerra also admitted to perjuring himself before Kaplan on several key points when he was cross-examined in a separate international arbitration proceeding after the end of the RICO trial. Yet Kaplan -- who repeatedly called the Ecuadorians the "so-called" plaintiffs and who made comments widely construed as racist -- credited Guerra in an obvious attempt to help rescue Chevron from the entirely appropriate liability imposed by Ecuador's courts. Here is a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron in the Ecuador trial.

Given that BP has paid out about $50 billion for its Gulf of Mexico spill, Chevron actually got it off easy for its far worse contamination of the rainforest. The company abandoned roughly 1,000 open-air waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor which continue to contaminate soils and groundwater to this day. Most were built in the 1970s. Cancer rates in the affected area have skyrocketed.

Kaplan's mishandling of the case becomes even more outrageous when one considers it was Chevron that insisted the trial take place in Ecuador. In the 1990s, the company filed 14 affidavits in U.S. federal court praising Ecuador's judicial system. To help Chevron get out of the conundrum of having lost in the forum of its choosing, Kaplan determined that Ecuador's entire judicial system was incapable of producing fair verdicts even though Chevron had repeatedly lauded the country's courts.

It also turns out that Kaplan never revealed that during the RICO trial he held investments in Chevron. In an act utterly devoid of ethics, he never disclosed his financial connection to the company even though Donziger and his colleagues twice tried to remove him from the case for bias.

Kaplan also called the Ecuador litigation "mud wrestling" and said Donziger's goal was to use the case to "fix the balance of payments of deficit" of the United States. "I got it from the beginning," he said. And that was before he held as much as an evidentiary hearing.

Whether the U.S. Supreme Court will step in to police what can only be described as judicial corruption remains to be seen. But don't hold your breath. In recent years, our appellate courts shown little but hostility to foreign plaintiffs who come to our shores to hold American companies accountable for their misconduct abroad.

It is important to remember that Chevron's dirty work in manufacturing evidence for Kaplan was farmed out to the U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in a practice group headed by the notorious Mastro, the former deputy to New York Mayor Rudy Guliani. Known for his divisive approach to politics, Mastro was largely hated in New York's black and Latino communities when he worked as a public official. It was Mastro who steered the case to Kaplan.

Donziger called Mastro "a corporate hit man of the worst order."

"My experience is that Mastro and his cohorts will do virtually anything, including paying witnesses massive sums of money, to help rescue clients in trouble if the fees are high enough and they believe the judge is friendly enough to protect them," Donziger said. Federal judges twice sanctioned Gibson Dunn for using the discovery process to harass the Ecuadorians. (See here for a history of the firm's many ethical problems.)

Called a "warhorse lawyer" by Rolling Stone magazine, Donziger said this in the press release:

It is our view that Kaplan and the Second Circuit owe the people of Ecuador an apology for refusing to consider evidence that blows up Chevron's false narrative. This is an ongoing stain on the American judiciary in the eyes of the world and it will not go away unless and until the Supreme Court acts.

A larger issue is that Chevron created the RICO strategy as a playbook for polluting corporations to retaliate against human rights lawyers and their clients who hold them accountable. The playbook is designed to threaten advocates who dare challenge the false company narrative. It no doubt represents a grave threat to social justice advocacy. Retaliatory corporate lawsuits are an intimidation tool designed to drive away lawyers and leave human rights victims utterly defenseless.

Chevron even admitted in an email that its strategy was "to demonize Donziger" to distract attention from the fact is deliberately dumped oil waste into the rainforest, decimating indigenous groups and causing a humanitarian crisis that has killed or threatens to kill thousands.

Chevron has used at least 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers, at a cost in excess of $2 billion, to try to run Donziger and his colleagues off the case. It has not worked. Since Chevron launched its attacks in 2009, the company has lost the underlying case in Ecuador; seen it affirmed unanimously by Ecuador's Supreme Court; and seen Canada's Supreme Court unanimously reject Chevron's attempt to block a seizure action against its assets in that country.

Chevron knows it is in serious trouble in the Ecuador matter. It's strategy is to keep kicking the can down the road, thinking it will be cheaper to pay up far in the future.

In the meantime, Donziger and his clients have attracted top legal talent to their cause -- including John Keker of Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco, Alan Lenczer of Lenczer Slaght in Toronto, and Sergio Bermudes who is one of the top litigators in Brazil. Many other law firms are helping as the villagers maintain enforcement actions against Chevron to force compliance with the judgment.

Chevron CEO John Watson and General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate, who make a combined $30 million annually while the average annual income of their victims is about $1,000, have very little to show for their jihad against the Ecuadorians. Their problem is that regardless of whether the U.S. Supreme Court decides to take the case, the horse has escaped the barn.

Having decided to litigate elsewhere, there is now nothing a U.S. court can do to rescue Chevron from its growing financial liability to the people of Ecuador. But there is much the High Court can do to restore our judiciary in the eyes of the world and protect the First Amendment rights of social justice advocates.

It can start by using the Chevron pollution case to sanction Kaplan for letting a major American oil company try to evade liability by corrupting our system of justice with lies, fraud, and bribes.

Why Canadian Courts Care about Justice in Ecuador

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:37:00 +0000

Reposted from Huffington Post.

Marta Isabel Arrobo, 49, recalls the numerous health problems she and her family have encountered living in close proximity to several pits of the Sur-Oeste Station. Photo credit: Amazon Watch

Jay Cameron asks some important questions in his deeply flawed pro-Chevron opinion piece about one of the biggest environmental crimes in history. We think he deserves some answers, but despite repeated requests the Financial Post declined to even respond to our requests to publish this response. Fortunately, here we can provide the answers to Cameron's questions, but some basic facts about the case that Cameron gets wrong must be corrected first.

First, the title of the piece itself is false, since U.S. courts didn't "originally rule" in the Chevron case. In 2011, after almost two decades of legal wrangling and based on thousands of scientific samples – most of which were provided by Chevron itself – an Ecuadorian court ruled Chevron liable for the amount of US $18 billion to pay for environmental cleanup, health care costs and punitive damages for the crime – admitted to by Chevron – of deliberately dumping over 18 billion gallons of toxic oil drilling water into the once pristine Amazon rainforest, home to 30,000 inhabitants. This trial took place in the venue of Chevron's choice: Ecuador. The "original ruling" on that decision was the Ecuadorian appeals court and later its Supreme Court, which eliminated the punitive damages on constitutional grounds and halved the judgement to US $9.5 billion. Those courts dismissed Chevron's fraud claims after considering the "evidence." Furthermore, the civil suit brought against Chevron was perfectly legal in Ecuador since the "release" given by a prior Ecuadorian administration specifically did not protect Chevron from civil claims, a fact that Chevron itself did not dispute when it argued that Ecuador was the proper venue for this case.

Mr. Cameron refers to "court-tested proof" of fraud in Chevron's retaliatory U.S. suit filed after the Ecuadorian verdict. That is false. In fact, it might interest Mr. Cameron to know that not a single piece of evidence about the actual contamination was even permitted in that trial. Cameron also omits the fact that Chevron's fraud claims were based almost wholly on the testimony of a corrupt ex-judge who later admitted, during another Chevron forum-shopping legal case, that he lied about the alleged bribe. Worse yet, the actual "proof" – the forensic evidence about the authorship of the original Ecuadorian judgment – was not considered by the US court, despite the fact that it validates the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' claims that the judgement was not ghost-written. The Canadian courts, however, were made aware of these facts. They also know about the leaked Chevron videos showing their own technicians finding toxic contamination at former well site Chevron swore to have completely remediated (more evidence that Kaplan refused to allow in his court despite Chevron's lawyers having authenticated them).

Ultimately, the courts in Canada have seen through Chevron's attempt to abuse the legal system with its might and fabricate false stories to escape justice for a crime that still festers in 1,000 unlined open-air pits like scars across the Amazon. Those same courts also realize that Ecuadorians are still dying today from contamination from those pits. They will offer Chevron a chance to explain itself in a trial and Chevron is perfectly welcome to put its key witness on the stand. But will they risk it, since he has already admitted to having lied for them in exchange for a multi-million dollar payoff?

To answer Mr. Cameron's question, the reason the Canadian courts considered the valid claims of the 30,000 Ecuadorian victims of one of the worst corporate crimes in history is because they realize that facts and justice do, in fact, matter.

Part of Canadian Judge's Decision a Slap in the Face To Human Rights Victims Worldwide

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 19:21:00 +0000

After being forced by Chevron to litigate for an astonishing 24 years, Ecuadorian indigenous villagers fighting for their own survival are now set to seize the company's assets in Canada to pay for a court-mandated clean-up of what is probably the world's worst oil-related environmental disaster.

But Canadian trial judge Glenn Hainey, either through ignorance or by making an old-fashioned mistake of corporate law, has just put up a potential roadblock in this historic campaign. In so doing, he inadvertently has damaged the cause of human rights and helped smooth the way for corporate polluters like Chevron to obtain impunity for their environmental crimes.

In a decision last week, Hainey allowed the Ecuadorian villagers to try to seize Chevron's assets in Canada to force the company to pay for its $12 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador. That's a huge victory for human rights. But oddly, Hainey also ruled that the assets in the oil giant's wholly-owned subsidiary in Canada were off-limits to collection.

Given that most of Chevron's estimated $25 billion worth of assets in Canada are held in the company's subsidiary (called Chevron Canada), that could be a big problem for collection if allowed to stand. We believe this part of Hainey's decision will be swiftly reversed, as was a previous trial judge's decision in favor of Chevron on similar grounds.

As background, Chevron has admitted to abandoning 1,000 toxic waste pits on indigenous ancestral lands in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Five indigenous groups have been decimated and are fighting for survival. The company also confessed that it deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste (known as "production waters") into streams and rivers of Ecuador, causing an outbreak of cancer in the affected area as confirmed by several independent health evaluations.

Hainey's decision has dramatic and even terrifying implications for the Ecuadorian villagers and all human rights victims. The thinking behind it explains why all too often the fossil fuel industry feels it can run roughshod over the planet while externalizing the costs of pollution to taxpayers without ever being held accountable in a court of law.

For context, Chevron has 1,500 wholly-owned subsidiaries around the world. Most of these subsidiaries, like many of those the company has set up in Canada, have no operations but are used for tax avoidance purposes and to avoid liability. Hainey ruled that all Chevron and other corporate polluters have to to do to avoid liability is to stuff their high-value assets (like oil fields, refineries, and pipelines) into a paper subsidiary and leave it at that.

Under Hainey's stunning theory, communities like those in Ecuador that win court judgments over environmental pollution are left out in the cold even though they adhere to the rule of law and fight for decades to win court judgments that get upheld on appeal.

What's really crazy about the logic behind the ruling -- and extremely unfair -- is that Chevron gets to keep all the profits from its subsidiaries, but the subs themselves are not allowed to be used to pay the company's debts. Chevron Canada pays about $3 billion annually in dividends to its sole shareholder Chevron yet is immune from any effort to collect a debt against its patron.

American law professor Aaron Marr Page recently published a brilliant deconstruction of the Hainey decision in the Huffington Post that should be a must-read for those who want to understand how such an unjust result can emerge from an apparently well-meaning judge.

After pointing out that Chevron has engaged in many years of forum shopping, judicial sabotage, and falsification of evidence to evade paying for its pollution in Ecuador, Professor Page writes:

Judge Hainey essentially ruled that a multinational fleeing a valid court judgment that hides its assets in a maze of paper subsidiaries can completely insulate itself from paying its obligations, while losing nothing in terms of profit or control... The decision stands as a dangerous precedent for the many other corporate accountability claims that are currently underway in Canadian and other courts.

Professor Page continues:

[Hainey] says to those claims that even if you prevail at the jurisdiction and the merits/liability stages, even if you sustain your victory on appeal, here is yet another barrier that could prevent you from merely collecting on a successful judgment. The chill this could cast more broadly on efforts to enforce human rights norms is obvious.

Professor Page also underscored that Hainey's fundamental error was that he used the wrong legal analysis of the corporate separateness defense raised by Chevron.

The real issue that Hainey missed is that there is a $12 billion judgment against Chevron based on voluminous record evidence documenting in great detail the company's pollution in Ecuador. The decision was affirmed unanimously by Ecuador's Supreme Court in the country where Chevron accepted jurisdiction. Chevron is a scofflaw debtor and no different than a parent who owes child support and flees to another state to evade paying.

The issue before Hainey was simple: Chevron Canada is a Chevron asset that obviously can be used to seize a debt owed by Chevron under basic legal principles adhered to by all civilized nations and codified in Canada's Execution Act. It's no different than a court ordering the seizure of the car or bank account of a parent to force payment of court-ordered child support.

Instead of adhering to this bedrock principle of law -- creditors have the right to seize a debtor's assets to satisfy a debt -- Hainey took Chevron's bait and went on a radical tangent by engaging in a "pierce the corporate veil" analysis which has no applicability to this enforcement action. He then bailed out Chevron by claiming Chevron Canada is a "separate" company even though it is totally owned and controlled by Chevron and 100% of its revenues flow up to Chevron as dividends.

But even under the incorrect "pierce the corporate veil" analysis, Hainey still got it wrong. In the modern globalized world, it is preposterous to think a company can avoid liability in one country by moving its assets to a paper subsidiary in another that it totally controls and then claim it is a "separate" company.

Hainey never should have succumbed to Chevron's pressure and used the "pierce the corporate veil" analysis. That analysis should apply only when there is a judgment against a subsidiary that has insufficient assets, forcing the creditor to go after the parent. In the Ecuador case, we have the opposite situation. There is a judgment by the villagers against a parent (Chevron) that refuses to pay and is a scofflaw. The subsidiary is simply one asset of the parent that could be seized to satisfy the judgment and force the parent to respect the rule of law.

When one understands Chevron's quarter-century of abuse of the civil justice systems in Ecuador and the United States, Hainey's decision becomes even more bewildering.

One wonders if he was cowed by the 30 or so Chevron lawyers from powerful law firms who showed up in his court during a four-day motions hearing last September. Most of them stared him down while only four or so of the lawyers actually did the argument.

The tab in legal fees to Chevron for what appeared to be a four-day exercise in judicial intimidation was an estimated $500,000. But that's nothing compared to the $2 billion Chevron has paid to hire 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers to fight the villagers since the inception of the case in 1993.

While the affected villagers make around $500 per year on average tilling contaminated land courtesy of Chevron, Chevron grosses about $250 billion per year and is the third largest corporation in the U.S. Chevron CEO John Watson takes home around $30 million per year -- or 60,000 times as much as each of his victims in the rainforest.

Hainey might remember that Chevron originally fought for ten years to avoid jurisdiction in the United States. The company filed 14 sworn affidavits before U.S. courts praising Ecuador's courts as fair and accepted jurisdiction in Ecuador as a condition of the change of venue. But once the scientific evidence mounted against it in the Ecuador trial, Chevron sold its assets in the country and started to attack the court system it had previously praised.

Hainey's reasoning no doubt will be recognized as extremely disturbing by Canadian appellate courts, which have a long history of being open to the claims of human rights victims. A previous trial judge tried to block the enforcement trial in 2013 only to be unanimously overturned by two Canadian appellate courts, including the country's Supreme Court.

While Hainey closets himself behind mechanical arguments, human rights victims the world over rightly shudder at his reasoning. Courts like those in Ecuador make valiant efforts to advance the rule of law to hold polluters accountable. To be undermined by a trial judge in a faraway land is both demoralizing and a blow to civil society institutions everywhere.

People actually die from pollution as a result of delays produced by incorrect legal decisions.

As said, Canada's Supreme Court already blocked Chevron's earlier attempt to stop the Ecuadorian villagers from launching what in the commercial context would be considered a routine asset seizure action. Canada's appellate courts should order Chevron to defend itself in a speedy enforcement trial that will have zero tolerance for further litigation abuse.

In Canada, Chevron Faces New Nightmare Scenario Over Ecuador Pollution Liability

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 19:14:00 +0000

A Canadian trial judge on Friday issued a ruling over the potential seizure of Chevron assets to pay for the clean-up of the billions of gallons of toxic waste the company dumped into Ecuador's rainforest. The ruling has enormous implications for Chevron shareholders and the corporate accountability movement on a global scale.

Judge Glenn Hainey of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that Ecuadorian indigenous groups from the Amazon rainforest can take the oil giant to trial as part of their effort to seize company assets to pay the $9.5 billion tab needed to remediate their ancestral lands.

The indigenous nationalities in 2011 won the largest environmental judgment in history in Ecuador but Chevron has refused to pay, selling off its assets in the country and hiding behind technical arguments. Chevron had insisted the trial be held in Ecuador and accepted jurisdiction there. The company also committed fraud by falsifying evidence and engaging in a sham remediation.

Here are some of the important implications from the latest Canada decision:

Chevron has definitively lost its bid to avoid an enforcement trial in Canada. Chevron used every technical defense in the book to avoid the trial. Even Canada's Supreme Court ruled against Chevron. Now it must face a terrifying day of reckoning over how its key witness, Alberto Guerra, has lied under oath and that its fundamental story about judicial bribery is false.

Chevron's U.S. lawyer Randy Mastro will face enormous risk. American lawyers Randy Mastro and Avi Weitzman of the U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher violated the law by arranging for Guerra to be paid $2 million for his false testimony in a farcical retaliation trial in the U.S. They coached Guerra for 53 consecutive days before he testified; Guerra later admitted lying on the stand. Gibson Dunn's obstruction of justice in the U.S. "racketeering" trial will be front and center in the Canada proceeding.

Look for Chevron's executives to try to settle before the trial: Chevron shareholders already are up in arms over management's mishandling of the Ecuador liability. Look for embattled CEO John Watson to order his lawyers to try to settle the case before Guerra is forced to take the stand and the company's entire narrative falls apart.

Chevron's strategy of perpetual delay just got shellacked. Trial judge Hainey tossed out two of the company's main defenses which already had been litigated and rejected by three layers of courts in Ecuador. The company will be kept on a short leash in Canada, undermining its strategy of delaying any judicial procedure that could hold it accountable on the merits.

Chevron is kidding itself if it thinks its Canadian subsidiary is immune from liability. The part of the Hainey decision that immunized Chevron's wholly-owned subsidiary from enforcement runs counter to logic, violates the spirit of a prior decision of the Canada Supreme Court, and is likely to be reversed on appeal. Ten separate Canadian appellate judges already reversed this ruling when issued by a prior trial judge in 2013.

Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the villagers, was eloquent in her response to the latest development. She called it a "resounding victory for Ecuadorian indigenous groups and farmer communities who have struggled for more than two decades to clean up its toxic waste."

Hinton added:

The court sent Chevron a powerful message that it can no longer ride the legal merry-go-round and re-litigate the same discredited defenses in different courts as part of its strategy of delay...The villagers expect to proceed later this year with their seizure of Chevron's assets to force the company to respect multiple court judgments that found it guilty of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the waterways of Ecuador, causing an outbreak of cancer and other harms afflicting thousands of people. Ultimately, we are confident that Canada's courts will hold Chevron fully accountable for its outrageous and criminal conduct in Ecuador.

Carlos Guaman, an Ecuador community leader and the executive director of the coalition that brought the enforcement action, said he wanted to "thank" Canada's courts "for sending a strong message to Chevron that its outrageous strategy of blocking justice will soon end."

Chevron's Massive Pollution In Ecuador Frames Death of Legendary Nurse Rosa Moreno

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 18:54:00 +0000

Rosa Moreno, the legendary nurse in Ecuador who spent three decades treating children and others afflicted with cancer in the area of Chevron's oil pollution in the Amazon rainforest, has now herself succumbed to cancer, the Amazon Defense Coalition reported on Wednesday. One might reasonably question whether Chevron's refusal to clean up its pollution in Ecuador played a role in this tragic event.

Moreno, a splendid human being well-known to those of us who write The Chevron Pit, died this week in the Amazon village of San Carlos after a two-year battle with the illness. Moreno, 55, had hosted a long line of celebrities -- including Brad Pitt and the actor Trudie Styler -- in her tiny health clinic in the town of San Carlos as she tried to sensitize the world to the plight of people who won a historic $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in 2013.

Rosa Moreno in front of the San Carlos clinic

San Carlos is akin to Love Canal in the United States, only worse. For decades the village has been home to dozens of toxic waste Superfund sites that include open-air waste pits filled with oil sludge that that were built by Texaco in the 1970s and abandoned. Texaco installed pipes to run the toxic waste into nearby streams and rivers relied on by locals for drinking water. The pits were documented in a report on 60 Minutes and in the documentary Crude by acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger.

Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and inherited the liability from the disaster. Over the years, the company has used 60 law firms and roughly 2,000 lawyers to evade paying for the court-mandated clean-up.

Aside from the pits, one of which is pictured below, Texaco located a large oil separation station in the middle of town. The station systematically discharged billions of gallons of benzene-laced production waters into rivers and streams, creating a ticking time bomb that has killed or threatens to kill thousands of people. Chevron never even extended the courtesy of putting up fences around the hazardous waste sites to keep animals out and to warn people away.

Oil pit built by Texaco in the 1970s and abandoned by Chevron near San Carlos, where Rosa Moreno lived.

Moreno was a bright light in the middle of what might be the most contaminated town on earth. From a press release from the Amazon Defense Coalition, the grass roots organization that brought the historic lawsuit against Chevron:

Moreno was mostly known as a person who tried against all odds to stave off the impending health disaster with her compassionate care of young children. Her clinic was a short walk from her house, and she was often found there seven days per week. Moreno meticulously kept a handwritten log of people in the clinic who had died, often without receiving proper treatment given the paucity of doctors in the area. The list in recent years had grown to dozens of names -- many young children -- even though only 2,000 people lived in the town. Each name on the list had a date of birth and date of death scrawled in Moreno's distinctive script.

Steven Donziger, the longtime U.S. legal advisor to the affected Ecuadorian communities who has been targeted by Chevron for his work to hold the company accountable, laid some of the blame for Moreno's death at the feet of the company:

I firmly believe Rosa and many others like her in San Carlos would not have died had Chevron mets its legal and moral responsibilities to the people of Ecuador. Rosa's death, like those of many others in Ecuador, was entirely preventable. Chevron should provide compensation to her family and medicine and diagnostic equipment for the San Carlos clinic, in addition to remediating the abysmal environmental conditions that continue to put innocent lives at risk.

Moreno's legacy will live on in many ways.

Many of the celebrities who visited Moreno in her clinic took action to alleviate the human suffering and to protest Chevron's outrageous behavior. They include Styler, who has written articles to call attention to Chevron's human rights abuses and who started a project with UNICEF that has delivered clean water to numerous villages in the affected area.

Rosa Moreno and colleague Mariana Jimenez in San Francisco

Rep. James P. McGovern (D-MA), the only U.S. Congressman to visit the devastated area, toured the health clinic in 2008 and then vividly described the horrific conditions created by Chevron in a moving letter to President-elect Obama. Bianca Jagger went to Chevron's shareholder meeting and gave the company's CEO hell in a blistering speech. Berlinger's film included Moreno and scenes from her clinic.

Karen Hinton, the former press secretary for New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, has hounded Chevron for its irresponsible behavior in Ecuador in a series of blogs published on The Huffington Post. And Donziger -- a classmate of Barack Obama from Harvard Law School -- has been a thorn in Chevron's side for more than two decades, as his own writings illustrate.

If you have any doubt about the cause of Moreno's death, look no further than the numerous independent studies that demonstrate Chevron's toxic legacy has produced skyrocketing cancer rates in the area where she lived. One study from a former Rand Corporation analyst predicts 9,000 deaths in the affected area in the coming years if Chevron refuses to remediate the disaster.

For more on Texaco and Chevron's dastardly behavior in Ecuador, see this video.

Although Chevron's management team surely never thought it possible, Rosa was among the many impoverished Ecuadorians who banded together and fought for years before finally holding the company legally accountable in 2011 after an eight-year trial. In a paradigmatic breakthrough in the human rights area, several prominent corporate law and litigation firms around the world signed up to represent the villagers. And in 2013, Ecuador's Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the trial court ruling in a 222-page decision that meticulously documented the overwhelming evidence against Chevron.

Although the lawsuit originally was filed in the U.S., the trial was held in Ecuador at Chevron's request and the company willingly accepted jurisdiction there. Of course, Chevron thought it could engineer a political dismissal by pressuring Ecuador's government. That unethical strategy backfired.

Chevron's continued obstinance -- it sold off its assets in Ecuador during the trial and has vowed to fight "until hell freezes over" -- forced Rosa and her friends to try to seize company assets in Canada to pay for their clean-up. That country's Supreme Court recently backed the villagers in a unanimous opinion. Chevron is now facing its own ticking time bomb in court.

Rosa, your legacy will inspire the affected communities and their allies around the world to fight on until Chevron pays the court judgment in full and the responsible individuals are held accountable for their misconduct.

Exxon Campaign Against Environmental Groups and AG Offices Eerily Similar To Chevron's Against Ecuadorian Indigenous

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 19:38:00 +0000

Reposted from Medium.

Exxon and Chevron have something in common other than oil these days. They both are playing big victims in big ways to distract from their environmental wrongdoing.

These gigantic companies are arguing in court that separate but similar “illegal conspiracies” against them are underway by groups of environmentalists, states attorneys general, trial lawyers and liberal-leaning advocates.

Chevron says it’s being “victimized” by a group of impoverished Ecuadorian indigenous peoples and their lawyers who won a historic $9.5 billion judgment for water and soil contamination in the Ecuador rainforest and want Chevron to pay up now, after 23 years of litigation.

Ecuadorian women and their children living in the rainforest who Chevron says are “conspiring” against the oil giant in collusion with their lawyers and environmental groups, like Amazon Watch — Photo by Lou Dematteis

Note: Chevron demanded the historic court case be tried in Ecuador, in the first place, and accepted jurisdiction there. Three levels of Ecuador’s courts have upheld the damage award, based on no fewer than 106 technical evidentiary reports submitted to the court.

But, like Donald Trump who refuses to accept the outcome of the presidential election unless he wins, Chevron refuses to pay the environmental judgment.

That’s after the company stripped its assets from Ecuador during the trial, forcing the Ecuadorians — who have suffered from decades of pollution — to file a lawsuit in Canada to seize company assets there as payment for the Ecuador judgment.
Meanwhile, Exxon would have us believe environmental groups and states attorneys general are colluding — in violation of their 1st, 4th and 15th Amendment rights — by demanding to know what Exxon knew about climate change in the 1970s but intentionally kept from shareholders and the public. They are asking questions about possible securities law violations based on Exxon’s obvious deceptions about global warming. Check out one of numerous internal admissions kept from shareholders.

While Chevron wrote the “victim” playbook, Exxon is taking pages from it. Examples of the eerily similar campaigns:

Similar Message

Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers used this line in recent news coverage to describe its victimization: “This is a conspiracy to deliberately misrepresent the company’s position and to tear down the company.”

Chevron’s main lawyer Randy Mastro — known for “exonerating” NJ Governor Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal — has accused the Ecuadorians and their lawyers of a “criminal conspiracy” and said, if successful, “it will be open season on U.S. corporations.”

Similar Tactics

Chevron has by its own admission sought to demonize one of the Ecuadorians’ lawyers, Steven Donziger. In much the same way, Exxon is demonizing the motivations of state attorneys general.

Exxon has recruited U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith to conduct hearings on the investigation launched by state attorney generals. As Chairman of the House Science Committee, the Texas lawmaker has subpoenaed the environmental groups and Attorneys General in New York and Massachusetts for all sorts of documents as an obvious form of harrassment.

Chevron played a similar card over ten years ago, lobbying Congress to end Ecuador’s trade preferences in retaliation for “allowing” the Ecuadorians to file a lawsuit against the oil giant. Had Congress agreed, Ecuador would have lost thousands of jobs for its low-income residents. A Chevron lobbyist told Newsweek the U.S. “…can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this — companies that have made big investments around the world.”

Similar Legal Strategy

Chevron countersued the Ecuadorians and their lawyers claiming their entire case was a “sham” and that they were trying to extort money from the company.

In turn, Exxon took the AGs and the environmentalists to court.

Here’s the reality on these two so-called “conspiracies”.

When it became clear the Ecuadorians would win their long court battle in Ecuador, Chevron unveiled an intimidation campaign in the U.S. designed to discredit the Ecuadorians and their lawyers, delay the enforcement of the Ecuador judgment and deceive the public and financial markets about what happened in the South American country.

With over 2,000 lawyers and legal assistants, at least six major public relations firms and as many, if not more, lobbying firms in tow, Chevron filed a retaliatory, RICO lawsuit for extortion and bribery against the Ecuadorians and launched a coast-to-coast PR slander campaign against them and their lawyers.

Now comes Exxon with a similar campaign against 350.org, Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council and 40 other well-known environmental and social justice groups, as well as the Attorney General.

Exxon’s PR guru Suzanne McCarron told a Business Week reporter that the effort against Exxon “feels very orchestrated” and “we wanted to know who’s behind this thing.”

Of course, it’s no secret — and never has been — who is behind it. All McCarron had to do was Google search “Exxon” and “climate change” and the people criticizing her company will appear. It’s absurd to believe the groups “behind this thing” don’t have constitutional rights to criticize and probe the actions and policies of a publicly-traded company.

But, like Chevron, if Exxon could build a different narrative — one of intrigue, conspiracies, and collusion — then the leaders of the “conspiracy” could be discredited and demonized, just as Chevron tried to do to the lawyers for the Ecuadorian villagers.

“Exxon has hired an army of lawyers to try and distract from the real story here: that they lied about their knowledge of climate change for decades,” said 350.org communications director Jamie Henn. “Delay and deceit.”

“Exxon’s filing leaves out the fact that they have spent millions of dollars funding misinformation campaigns, faux think tanks, and the elections of climate deniers. They’re reacting this way because they know the stakes of this investigation are enormous.”

The Ecuadorians could tell the U.S. environmental groups a thing or two about delay, deceit, and distractions.

Delay: 23 years of litigation in U.S., Ecuadorian and now Canadian courts, thanks to the litigious Chevron and its bottomless pit of money for lawyers.

Another example of Chevron’s deceit and deception in Ecuador rainforest.

Deceit: Chevron’s paying a witness over $2 million in cash and benefits to testify falsely against the Ecuadorians that they bribed a sitting judge and wrote the judgment for him. The $2 million is four times the amount of the false bribery claim. Chevron’s lawyer Mastro and his team spent 53 days “coaching” the witness to lie.

Distractions: Filing lawsuits in dozens of jurisdictions to draw attention away from the pollution in Ecuador and drain the Ecuadorians of any money for lawyers so they are not able to enforce the judgment that three layers of appellate courts in Ecuador have upheld.

Despite the delays, deceit and distractions, the Ecuadorians are still fighting Chevron and could end up collecting the full amount of their judgment in Canada, where the country’s Supreme Court backed them in a unanimous procedural decision in 2015.

Time will tell. Chevron as well as Exxon should look around and see how the world is changing. Time is running out for both climate change deniers and corporate polluters.

Calling Chevron's Bluff

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 22:06:00 +0000

Reposted from Eye on the Amazon.

One of the worst oil-related disasters in history occurred when Texaco, later purchased by oil giant Chevron, deliberately dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon over the course of decades. The resulting health crisis in the rainforest home of 30,000 Amazonian inhabitants continues to this day. A $40 million deal with the government of Ecuador in 1995 resulted in a sham remediation, after which Texaco publicly washed its hands of the affair.

Not satisfied with such an egregious lack of justice, the affected communities have continued to demand accountability, taking their case all the way to the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, and winning: in 2011 an Ecuadorian judge found Chevron liable for $9.5 billion in damages, a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court. Instead of doing the right thing, however, Chevron took its assets and fled from Ecuador, and continues to use its corporate might to avoid accountability. Nonetheless, the communities and their allies around the world haven't given up the quest for justice.

The quest continues

Amazon Watch spent four days last week in a courthouse in Toronto to witness the latest, and hopefully last, chapter in this epic quest for justice.

When Chevron fled Ecuador after the $9.5 billion judgement against it, the affected communities turned to the courts in Brazil, Argentina and Canada to hold the company accountable, seeking summary judgments allowing the seizure of the assets of Chevron subsidiaries in order to pay for the Ecuador judgement.

Backed by a unanimous 2015 decision from Canada's Supreme Court giving a green light for the Ecuadorians to sue Chevron in Canada, last week's trial is an important step in the quest for justice. The principal issue before the court was whether to grant the Ecuadorian's request for access to Chevron Canada's assets to cover the $9.5 billion judgement, versus Chevron's defense motion to summarily dismiss the entire claim. The Ecuadorians base their plea on the massive evidence of contamination in Ecuador and a $9.5 billion verdict issued in Ecuador and upheld by its highest court. Chevron claims the verdict itself is fraudulent, basing this claim on the fact that it managed to win a retaliatory RICO (racketeering) lawsuit in the US by alleging bribery, corruption, and a "ghostwritten" judgment by the Ecuadorian court.

Also at issue is what lawyers call "piercing the corporate veil" of hidden parent-subsidiary relationships in order to hold Chevron Canada – a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron Corp. – liable for the actions and its parent company. The Ecuadorians assert that their action doesn't really hold Chevron Canada responsible, it simply seeks to hold Chevron accountable by seizing assets it controls in Canada through what is actually nothing more than a holding company. This is an important issue for corporate accountability advocates everywhere, because corporations around the world attempt to hide behind the corporate veil.

Therefore, Ontario Superior Court Judge Glenn Hainey will have to decide whether to grant a summary judgement in favor of either the Ecuadorians or Chevron, or to send the case to trial to examine in depth the claims made by both sides.

This last option was welcomed by the lawyer for the Ecuadorians, Alan Lenczner, who encouraged Judge Hainey to give him the opportunity to demonstrate the falsehood of Chevron's claims of bribery and a ghostwritten judgement in Ecuador, and the resulting invalidity of the US RICO decision.

Lenczner's offer provoked quite a reaction from Chevron's legal team in the courtroom (over a dozen US and Canadian lawyers), but he persisted. "That's the issue and what should be tried here. If they're right and have confidence in that, then they can show you and... well then, we lose," Lenczner continued emphatically. "We should have a trial on the ghostwriting! Here's how a trial would go. I will stand up and file a judgment which will be valid until you [the judge] set it aside. Chevron will then bring on their defense and call Guerra [Chevron's “witness” to the alleged bribery]... They won't call Guerra, they're afraid to," concluded Lenczner. By doing so he called their bluff; Chevron's RICO verdict is predicated on the testimony of a corrupt witness, who has since admitted he lied in exchange for over $2 million from Chevron.

To explain the details of this sordid tale and just how Chevron has apparently backed itself into a seemingly impossible corner, we must return to the beginning of the story and detail more about Chevron's efforts to escape justice at all costs.

The history

While Texaco long since admitted to dumping the toxic waste as a cost-saving measure, and is therefore responsible (as the sole operator) for the contamination, Chevron, since its purchase of Texaco, has itself dumped billions of dollars into fighting to avoid a full cleanup, even while knowing full well it could never win the case based on the merits.

The number of legal hoops that Chevron has jumped through to avoid accountability are impressive. When the communities brought their first claim against Texaco, in New York, Texaco spent a decade arguing that Ecuador was the proper venue for the case. It eventually won that argument, but then on the first day of the trial in Ecuador objected to the entire case and claimed it shouldn't be there either. It proceeded to drag out this second trial another eight years and used every dirty trick in the book to throw wrenches in the wheel of justice.

As the case was finally coming to an end in Ecuador, leaked internal memos revealed Chevron's plan to vilify the Ecuadorians, their lawyers and the entire Ecuadorian judicial system, as an attempt to invalidate in the court of public opinion any judgement that would be issued against it. Sparing no expense, the company waged a scorched earth legal strategy and hit pay-dirt when US Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan suggested Chevron file a RICO (racketeering) suit in the US; Kaplan made his suggestion based primarily off doctored outtake clips from the documentary Crude.

Kaplan's court was exactly what Chevron desperately needed – a friendly judge thousands of miles away from the actual events in the Amazon who didn't read Spanish and expressed public disdain for the Ecuadorians before his trial even began. Most importantly for Chevron, Kaplan would not even allow the word "contamination" in his courtroom, let alone evidence of the actual crime of Chevron's toxic waste. Further, Kaplan's willingness to grant any request of Chevron's lawyers at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher meant the widespread issuing of subpoenas of a long list of "non party co-conspirators" – a tactic to intimidate and harass anyone critical of Chevron in support of the Ecuadorians (including Amazon Watch).

The underlying claims made by Chevron are that the Ecuadorian verdict was obtained by fraud committed by the Ecuadorian and US legal team led by Steven Donziger. Chevron claims that Ecuadorian Judge Alberto Guerra was offered a $500,000 bribe by the Ecuadorian's lawyers to ghostwrite the $9.5 billion judgment and give it to the presiding judge Nicolas Zambrano. The truth is none of that actually happened.

In a mockery of justice, Judge Lewis Kaplan accepted the testimony of Guerra, even though it came to light during the trial that Guerra received millions of dollars from Chevron to testify and had been coached for 57 days before the trial. Guerra himself had already lost his position as a judge because he had admitted to taking at least 20 bribes in other cases, some for as low as $200. Kaplan even acknowledged that Guerra was not a very credible witness, but decided to believe him in this instance. This despite the fact that Guerra was unable to produce the evidence he claimed he had of the verdict he supposedly wrote for Zambrano, and that the details his story changed several times during his testimony.

Few people know that the way Chevron found out that Guerra was corrupt in the first place was because, as he admitted during the RICO trial, he approached Chevron looking for a bribe. Chevron claims it turned him down, but curiously it didn't report the incident to anyone. Ultimately, Guerra should never have been permitted to take the stand, but Kaplan allowed it. After a trial called a "Dickensian farce" by noted California Attorney John Keker, Kaplan issued a 500-page verdict and blasted the Ecuadorians and their lawyers. He never claimed that Chevron was innocent of the environmental crimes in the Amazon, but he declared that the Ecuadorian judgment was unenforceable in the U.S. The Second Circuit Appeals Court inexplicably held up Kaplan's verdict a few months ago. And while the Ecuadorians' appeal to the Second Circuit was based on Chevron's misuse of the RICO statute and their lawyer Donziger vehemently contested the "facts" of Kaplan's ruling, Chevron's PR spin machine often succeeds in getting the mainstream media to not report on the facts of the case but only on the allegations of fraud. Nor has the media reported widely that Kaplan's RICO verdict offers no legal remedy for Chevron since no one has sought to enforce the case in the U.S.

Nonetheless, things were looking bright for Chevron, even knowing that the Ecuadorian's lawyers will likely appeal Second Circuit decision. But soon, Chevron's strategy of legal shell games and forum shopping began to backfire. At the same time as the RICO case, Chevron filed a case against the government of Ecuador at the Hague under a bilateral trade agreement. A panel of three judges were tasked with determining if Ecuador had offered Chevron adequate legal protection. A ruling in Chevron's favor could essentially end up forcing the government of Ecuador, and thus its taxpayers, to foot the bill for the cleanup. While this tribunal process offered no role for the actual affected people of Ecuador, but it did offer another opportunity for more evidence from Ecuador to see the light of day.

After Kaplan had already issued his verdict, Chevron's "star witness" Guerra took the stand before the tribunal... and proceeded to recant his RICO testimony about the bribe he allegedly received from the Ecuadorians! Furthermore, he admitted he came to no arrangement with Zambrano and he had no evidence of a ghostwritten judgement. Guerra also admitted that he told Chevron what they wanted to hear to get a bigger payout as reported by Vice News:

In testimony before the tribunal, Guerra admitted that at this point he tried to get more money from Chevron. "At some point, I said, well, why don't you add some zeroes to that amount, and then later on I said, 'I think it could be 50,000.'"

In an even bigger blow to Chevron, the government of Ecuador produced an expert forensic report of the computer of Judge Zambrano proving the judgment was written over the course of four months and no external devices, nor pasted-in excerpts from Guerra were inserted into the judgment.

The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals did not consider Guerra's new testimony nor the forensic report, but the court in Toronto might. And THAT brings us to this past week in Canada. Chevron cannot afford to have Alberto Guerra get back on the stand. Their lawyers are desperate to avoid that – so much so that they made an outrageous and false claim in the last few moments of the hearing stating that they "held transcripts of both Guerra's RICO and Tribunal testimonies side-by-side and there was no daylight between them." That appears to be a pretty desperate lie when Guerra stated in the Tribunal when referring to the RICO testimony, "yes sir, I lied there." You could see a solar flare through that gaping hole.

So now we wait, hopefully not too long, for Judge Hainey to decide. In the meantime, some Canadian journalists have already started to ask: "where is Alberto Guerra? Does anyone know?" Presumably he's still living somewhere in the US in the house Chevron bought for him and driving the car they gave him to the mall each week to spend some of the monthly stipend he still receives from his friends in San Ramon. We can't wait to see if he surfaces.

We certainly hope someone does track Guerra down, because the Ecuadorian communities living in the midst of Chevron's deadly oil waste shouldn't have to wait a day longer. As their lawyer Lenczner said in closing, "this case calls for assistance not barriers. These people have been waiting more than 20 years."

No Money, Power or Influence, But the Ecuadorians Are Still Here, Fighting Chevron

noreply@blogger.com (The Blog Team) — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:21:00 +0000

A portrait of this Ecuadorian couple’s family members who died from cancer in a community contaminated by Chevron

Reposted from Medium.

I am sitting now in Ontario Superior Court wondering how the hell I got here but also marveling at the fact.

Over 23 years ago, 48 Ecuadorians sued Chevron for massive oil contamination in the Amazon rainforest.

Nobody thought they would win. They may never see a dime from Chevron.

But, like Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) said in The Color Purple, "I'm poor, black; I may even be ugly, but dear God! I'm here!"

The Ecuadorians have no money; no power; no influence. But, they are still here, demanding justice.

This Ecuadorian woman died from cancer not long after this photo was taken

The Ecuadorians are asking a Canadian court to enforce a $9.5 billion Ecuador judgment against Chevron for massive contamination since the oil giant sold all its assets there. I'm here to answer reporters' questions about the enforcement hearing.

For three decades, Chevron's predecessor Texaco treated the Ecuadorians' homeland, the Amazon rainforest, like a trash dump, intentionally pumping 16 billion gallons of toxic water into streams used for drinking and storing left over crude in over 900 huge unlined oil pits that leached into soil and water.

In 1993, the Ecuadorians sued Texaco in U.S. court. At Texaco's request, the court moved the case to Ecuador, and both Texaco and Chevron promised to abide by the Ecuador court's rulings. By 2013, three levels of Ecuador's judiciary had ruled against Chevron, affirming the $9.5 billion in damages.

Meanwhile, Chevron refuses to pay, saying it will fight "until hell freezes over, and then we will fight it out on the ice."

Given that indigenous peoples and the poor everywhere rarely have any pull with their governments and not enough money to pay for lawyers and lobbyists, they generally have been left to fend for themselves when the news media grows tired of their causes.

The Ecuadorians, however, have refused to go away.

They are still here, fighting for the justice that they deserve, beyond a shadow of a doubt.