But, here's one that screams for attention.
On September 16th, 2011, Chevron lawyer Randy Mastro of Gibson Dunn responded to a question posed by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals about the company's previous efforts to convince an arbitration tribunal at The Hague to stop enforcement of the Ecuador court's $18 billion judgment against it (a much longer story). Here's what he said:
"I want to—I do want to be super clear about this. We have not attempted, and we will not attempt, to ask the ... tribunal to stop entry of a judgment. We do intend to fight enforcement, but we—and we do intend to fight in Lago Agrio against entry of a judgment, but we have not and we will not, if I left any doubt about it, ask the ... tribunal to stop entry of a judgment in Lago Agrio."On January 3rd, 2012, the day the Ecuador appellate court upheld the $18 billion judgment, Chevron lawyer R. Doak Bishop of King & Spalding wrote to the arbitration tribunal, once again requesting help in stopping enforcement:
"Time is now of the essence to ensure that the Republic takes measures to prevent enforcement of the fraudulent Judgment... (Chevron) request(s) that the Republic of Ecuador inform the Tribunal...of the steps that it intends to take to ... prevent the Lago Agrio Judgment from becoming enforceable."One assumes Mastro thinks that asking the tribunal to ask the Republic of Ecuador to stop the enforcement gives him a passing grade on the lie detector test.
We anticipate Mastro will be in front of the Second Circuit again very soon, explaining the distinction and arguing why three U.S. appellate court judges have jurisdiction over an Ecuadorian court -- in a super clear way.
Maybe then he can find the doubt he left behind.
Chevron lawyer Randy Mastro