HOW THE ENVIRONMENTAL LAWYER WHO WON A MASSIVE JUDGMENT AGAINST CHEVRON LOST EVERYTHING

[Dulcinea]

LAST AUGUST, DURING the second-hottest year on record, while the fires in the Amazon rainforest were raging, the ice sheet in Greenland was melting, and Greta Thunberg was being greeted by adoring crowds across the U.S., something else happened that was of great relevance to the climate movement: An attorney who has been battling Chevron for more than a decade over environmental devastation in South America was put on house arrest.

Few news outlets covered the detention of Steven Donziger, who won a multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador against Chevron over the massive contamination in the Lago Agrio region and has been fighting on behalf of Indigenous people and farmers there for more than 25 years. So on August 6, Donziger left a Lower Manhattan courthouse unnoticed and boarded the 1 train home with an electronic monitoring device newly affixed to his ankle. Save for the occasional meeting with his lawyer or other court-sanctioned appointment, he has remained there ever since.

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/

[canuckledragger]

1. Greedy, corrupt, immoral fuckers

I hope every one of the Chevron employees involved in this gets cancer of the anus or something else as painful and inescapable.

It would be a start of righteously earned punishment considering what they did to the unprotected Amazonians, and the health problems THEY have to endure due to the oil company's criminal acts.

Fuck Chevron.

[ancianita]

2. Fuck Chevron.

[Farmer-Rick]

3. Corporations and the filthy rich who manipulate their wealth, have weaponized our justice system

"As he was arguing the case against Chevron in Ecuador back in 2009, the company expressly said its long-term strategy was to demonize him. And since then, Chevron has continued its all-out assault on Donziger in what’s become one of the most bitter and drawn-out cases in the history of environmental law. Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him. As a result, Donziger has been disbarred and his bank accounts have been frozen. He now has a lien on his apartment, faces exorbitant fines, and has been prohibited from earning money. As of August, a court has seized his passport and put him on house arrest. Chevron, which has a market capitalization of $228 billion, has the funds to continue targeting Donziger for as long as it chooses."

A court seems able to persecute an environmental activist. But an obvious thief and criminal in the white house they can't touch.

Our legal system is officially a Banana Republic.

[Rainbow Droid]

4. An egregious case because the entire oil industry is terrified of any precedent

where they can be held accountable for the damages caused by their pollution.

[ramen]

5. This is remarkably bad.

I had no idea about anything in this case. It's terrifying that this slips by

[CousinIT]

6. Related: These 100 Companies Cause 71% Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

CHEVRON is one of them:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212995251

[Chellee]

7. Judge Kaplan is equally to blame with Chevron.

How can any judge take the word of a witness like Guerra?

Guerra was a controversial witness. Chevron had prepped him on more than 50 occasions before his testimony, paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and arranged for the judge and his family members to move to the United States with a generous monthly stipend that was 20 times the salary he received in Ecuador. In 2015, when Guerra testified in an international arbitration proceeding, he admitted that he had lied and changed his story multiple times. According to Chevron, Guerra’s inaccuracies didn’t change the thrust of his testimony. For his part, Judge Kaplan wrote that his court “would have reached precisely the same result in this case even without the testimony of Alberto Guerra.”

Really? The conclusion was that Donziger was guilty of racketeering because Guerra said he bribed him and ghostwrote the decision. How is Guerra being a liar not relevant?