Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron Abusing Courts to Delay Judgment In $27 Billion Environmental Suit, Amazon Leaders Say

QUITO, Ecuador, Feb 20, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Trying to make good on its promise of a “lifetime of litigation” for indigenous groups in the Amazon, Chevron is using fraudulent tactics to delay an Ecuadorian trial court from reaching a decision on a record $27 billion in environmental damages, lawyers for local residents say.

“Facing overwhelming evidence of that they caused a massive human rights violation, Chevron is engaged in an absolute judicial fraud in Ecuador to keep the trial going to avoid paying a judgment,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lawyer for 30,000 Amazonian residents filed the case in 1993. “The company has gone rogue and thousands of innocent people are the victims.”

“Chevron does not respect the law and refuses to accept the legitimacy of the legal system because it knows it is about to lose the very trial that it fought to have in Ecuador,” said Fajardo, referring to the fact Chevron fought for nine years in U.S. federal court to have the case shifted to Ecuador over the objections of the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit seeks damages for the dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways over a 26-year period when Texaco operated an oil consortium. Five indigenous groups have had their traditional lifestyles decimated and cancer rates in the area have skyrocketed, according to plaintiffs and an independent, court-appointed expert.

The court expert, Professor Richard Cabrera, worked with a team of 14 independent technical experts. They concluded it would take at least $27 billion to remediate the rainforest to safe levels and compensate people for health problems caused by the contamination. The amount would wipe out more than a year of the company’s profits.

Saying that Chevron’s knows the “game is up” and that if faces a multi-billion dollar judgment, lawyers for the rainforest residents are asking that the trial judge rule based on more than 250,000 pages of evidence and close to 80,000 chemical sampling results generated in the lawsuit. Chevron’s top lawyer, Charles James, said recently that the company expects a “significant adverse judgment” in Ecuador.

“Chevron in this case has been granted more due process rights than probably any defendant in the history of civil justice,” said Julio Prieto, a lawyer who works with Fajardo. “They have had 15 years to litigate, and they are still looking for new courts that will accept their theories of junk science that posit that known human carcinogens cannot cause harm to people if ingested. Once one court rules against them, they look for another court to start the process all over again.

“The reality is that Chevron will never accept any adverse ruling from an independent court,” added Prieto.

Fajardo said Chevron’s latest gambit is to seek eight additional field inspections even through the evidentiary phase of the trial ended months ago. Chevron’s lawyers refused to schedule the requested inspections for almost three years, holding them back to be used as a vehicle to delay the trial in the eleventh hour.

It is unclear if the trial judge, Juan Nunez, will grant the eight inspections. Fajardo said Chevron will cynically claim its own rights were violated if the judge resists the company’s pressure.

Some of Chevron’s other abuses of the judicial process include:

• Trying to drown the court with more than 200,000 pages of documents, most of them repetitive. On several occasions, after losing a motion, the company has re-filed the exact same motion and insisted the judge rule in its favor.

• Claiming more field inspections need to be performed, even though the court already has inspected 94 sites over a five-year period – with 100% of the sites found to be contaminated, according to Richard Cabrera, the court expert.

• Chevron continues to buy large advertisements accusing the independent court expert, Professor Cabrera, of “fraud” without any supporting evidence – a smear campaign that is intended to destroy the reputation of a respected Ecuadorian scientist, said Fajardo.

• Chevron also has refused to speak out against clear human rights abuses intended to intimidate lawyers for the plaintiffs and court personnel. Lawyers have received death threats, and the office of the court expert was mysteriously robbed of case-related materials.

Fajardo said Chevron’s tactics not only violate the due process rights of the plaintiffs, but they also violate international law principles that prohibit parties from abusing the judicial process. The government of Ecuador has made the same charge against Chevron in a related international arbitration

SOURCE: Amazon Defense Coalition

A $16 Billion Problem

Chevron hires lobbyists to squeeze Ecuador in toxic-dumping case. What an Obama win could mean.

by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek

July 26th, 2008 Few legal battles have been more exotic than the lawsuit tried over the past five years in a steamy jungle courtroom in Ecuador’s Amazon rain forest. Brought by a group of U.S. trial lawyers on behalf of thousands of indigenous Indian peasants, the suit accuses Chevron of responsibility for the dumping (allegedly conducted by Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001) of billions of gallons of toxic oil wastes into the region’s rivers and streams. Activists describe the disaster as an Amazon Chernobyl. The plaintiffs—some suffering from cancer and physical deformities—have showed up in court in native garb, with painted faces and half naked. Chevron vigorously contests the charges and has denounced the entire proceeding as a “shakedown.”

But this spring, events for Chevron took an ominous turn when a court-appointed expert recommended Chevron be required to pay between $8 billion and $16 billion to clean up the rain forest. Although it was not the final verdict, the figures sent shock waves through Chevron’s corporate boardroom in San Ramon, Calif., and forced the company for the first time to disclose the issue to its shareholders. It has also now spawned an unusually high-powered battle in Washington between an army of Chevron lobbyists and a group of savvy plaintiff lawyers, one of whom has tapped a potent old schoolmate—Barack Obama.

Chevron is pushing the Bush administration to take the extraordinary step of yanking special trade preferences for Ecuador if the country’s leftist government doesn’t quash the case. A spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab confirmed that her office is considering the request. Attorney Steven Donziger, who is coordinating the D.C. opposition to Chevron, says the firm is “trying to get the country to cry uncle.” He adds: “It’s the crudest form of power politics.”

Chevron’s powerhouse team includes former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, former Democratic senator John Breaux and Wayne Berman, a top fund-raiser for John McCain—all with access to Washington’s top decision makers. (A senior Chevron exec has met with Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on the matter.) Chevron argues that it has been victimized by a “corrupt” Ecuadoran court system while the plaintiffs received active support from Ecuador’s leftist president, Rafael Correa—an ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The company says a loss could set a dangerous precedent for other U.S. multinationals. “The ultimate issue here is Ecuador has mistreated a U.S. company,” said one Chevron lobbyist who asked not to be identified talking about the firm’s arguments to U.S. officials. “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world.”

But Chevron’s foes are not without their own resources. Just recently, Donziger and other trial lawyers in the case retained their own high-profile D.C. superlobbyist, Ben Barnes, a major Democratic fund-raiser. And they have tapped a capital connection that may pay off even more. Roughly two years ago, when Donziger first got wind that Chevron might take its case to Washington, he went to see Obama. The two were basketball buddies at Harvard Law School. In several meetings in Obama’s office, Donziger showed his old friend graphic photos of toxic oil pits and runoffs. He also argued strongly that Chevron was trying to subvert the “rule of law” by doing an end run on an Ecuadoran legal case. Obama was “offended by that,” said Donziger. Obama vetted the issue with Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (who has long worked on Latin American human-rights issues), and in February 2006 the two wrote a letter to the then U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman urging the administration to permit the Ecuadoran peasants to have “their day in court.”

The Obama letter, written before the senator had even announced his run for president, is now the wild card in the Ecuador-Chevron dispute. Donziger said he has had no further discussions with Obama on the issue (although he has co-hosted a New York fund-raiser and, together with his wife, raised between $40,000 and $50,000 for Obama’s campaign). An Obama spokesman last week said the senator “stands by his position” that the case is a “matter for the Ecuadoran judicial system.” So now the prospect of an Obama presidency has given additional urgency to Chevron’s plea for help in Washington. Waiting until next year could leave the oil giant at the mercy of a judge in the Amazon jungle.

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