Chevron’s “Wild Distortions” Eviscerated in Court Filing

A legal paper filed in U.S. Federal Court last week by the plaintiffs taking on Chevron over its toxic contamination in Ecuador filed an explosive legal memo that finally shines some light on Chevron's consistent mischaracterizations of heavily edited, out-of-context film footage that the company has used to make hyper aggressive allegations of fraud. It turns out that the company, predictably, has used "wild distortions" of the Ecuador video to make their claims - wild distortions that are plainly contradicted by showing the film footage in its entirety and in the context that it was shot. Take a look at the press release from the Amazon Defense Coalition about Chevron's distortions, and the filing that sheds light on them:

 

Chevron Submits "Wild" Distortions of Ecuador Video to Federal Court; Conceals Evidence of Own Misconduct

Violates Federal Court Order By Sending Filings to Media

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In an explosive legal filing, lawyers for Ecuador's Amazonian communities suing Chevron for environmental damage have submitted evidence that the oil giant is attempting to mislead a U.S. Federal Court with "wild, superficial allegations" based on "snippets" of private video outtakes from Joe Berlinger's award-winning documentary film CRUDE.

Representatives of the 30,000 rainforest residents, who have suffered from nearly 50 years of living in and around oil contamination, responded in their own legal filing to Chevron's misleading use of the video clips by claiming Chevron is hiding "massive evidence of its own misconduct" contained in the footage.

CRUDE chronicles part of the 17-year legal battle between the Ecuadorian Amazonian communities and Chevron, which the residents accuse of creating the worst oil-related disaster on Earth.

Chevron had pressed to have U.S. federal judge Lewis Kaplan decide its motion before the plaintiffs could review the entire 500 or hours of film clips, as Chevron refused to share them after receiving them from Berlinger under court order. Review of even a small sample of clips by lawyers for the communities shows clearly that Chevron had attempted to mislead the Court and had violated a court order by turning over excerpts from the outtakes to the media before even serving opposing counsel.

According to the motion filed by the communities:

"Now it is clear why Chevron hid the full outtakes from the Court and from Plaintiffs, and pressed to have this motion decided before Plaintiffs could even review the evidence. Chevron and its counsel have rushed to mislead the Court and the public with a McMotion based on sound-bites and highly-edited, de-contextualized snippets constituting less than 0.1% of the outtakes. It did so while concealing massive evidence in the outtakes of its own misconduct. And it did so in plain violation of a Second Circuit order."

The motion also pointed out that Chevron provided its filing to a blogger previously paid by Chevron, Carter Wood, and sent out a press release and Tweet around two hours before it served opposing counsel. In direct violation of the court order, Chevron then produced transcripts of the outtakes directly to the San Francisco Chronicle, according to a report in that newspaper.

The legal brief for the communities showed Chevron's bad faith and selective editing of the film clips, including Chevron's false assertion that consultants for the Amazon communities admitted they have no evidence of groundwater contamination, when in fact those consultants said repeatedly that the groundwater is contaminated.

"Chevron's failure to accurately describe the evidence is part of a larger scheme by the Chevron lawyers to hide the company's misconduct in Ecuador," said Jonathan Abady, an American attorney for the Amazonian communities.

"Chevron is engaged in a desperate attempt to distract attention from the environmental disaster and public health crisis it caused in Ecuador," he added.

Chevron also came under fire from Berlinger for violating a federal court order prohibiting use of the materials for press or public relations purposes, noting Chevron's distribution of the material on Twitter and to bloggers hours before it was served on opposing lawyers.

Chevron's lawyers also suggested that an "enterprising" law student copy the outtakes from the court and post them on the Internet, in an apparent violation of the order, according to a blogger.

In his own court filing, Berlinger accused Chevron of making "false and misleading" statements about the film outtakes. He told Fortune magazine that he was "dismayed at the level of mischaracterizations in Chevron's Memorandum brief... The footage citations are being taken out of context and not being presented to the court in its entirety, creating numerous false impressions, precisely what we feared when we were first issued the original subpoena."

More information about the filing can be found at www.chevroninecuador.com.

Read More

Shan: Chevron Loses a Round in First Amendment Battle over Ecuador Film Footage

The below post appeared on ChevroninEcuador.com today – take a look below or after the jump:

Victory for First Amendment, Filmmakers, & Amazon Communities in Battle Vs. Chevron Over Ecuador Footage!

Chevron suffered a significant legal setback in the courts today in its sprawling cynical effort to evade accountability for its environmental devastation in Ecuador

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger will get an Appeals Court hearing of his appeal of the lower court decision ordering him to turn over 600+ hours of raw footage shot during the making of his award-winning documentary CRUDE. The ruling by the three-judge panel of the Circuit Court also 'stays' the subpoena ordering the production of the footage while Berlinger's appeal is pending.

This is excellent news for supporters of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, and documentary filmmakers and investigative journalists– and everyone that benefits from the work done by these people to shine a spotlight on issues of social and political importance. In other words, this is great news for everyone.

Furthermore, this is a victory for those who have dared to discover the truth about Chevron's environmental disaster in Ecuador, and the communities struggling to hold the oil giant accountable.

Chevron's lawyers from corporate law behemoth Gibson Dunnhope to mine the CRUDE outtakes for any material that they might find useful to their relentless legal and public relations schemes to discredit the plaintiffs, their attorneys and supporters, and the courts in Ecuador.

In response to the ruling, Mr. Berlinger's lawyer Maura Wogan told The Wrap:

"Today's decision signals that the appeals court takes seriously the rights of investigative journalists like Joe Berlinger."

And Joe Berlinger had this to say:

"I am delighted that the appellate court seems to understand the significant public interest in my appeal being heard. The stay that was granted today will allow us to argue the merits of our position before the Court."

The ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals vindicates the position of the growing number of high-profile supporters who have spoken out for Berlinger.

On Friday, film legend and environmental activist Robert Redford penned a powerful opinion article in the Huffington Post, entitled 'Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron: Why We Must All Defend Independent Filmmaking'.

Redford's argument couldn't be more straightforward:

Filmmakers like Joe Berlinger fulfill a crucial role in today's society by providing independent information on pressing contemporary human rights and social issues. Their success as storytellers depends on access to those men and women willing to talk on camera. If the subjects of those documentaries are fearful of the ramifications of telling the truth then the filmmaker has no story.

Without a shield law, there is no recognized journalist/filmmaker/source protection, creating the very scenario we have now. The judges in this case must recognize this is first and foremost a first amendment issue. The higher courts need to overturn the decision and adhere to higher standards of journalistic privilege.

If we allow the voice of the independent artist to be stifled we should expect nothing less than extreme repercussions for freedom of information... and freedom in general.

Also last week, Floyd Abrams, perhaps the best-known First Amendment lawyer in the country, filed an Amicus Curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The brief was joined by 13 (!) major media organizations– ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, The Associated Press, Dow Jones, The Washington Post, The New York Times Company, Gannett Company, Hearst Corporation, the Daily News, the Directors Guild of America, and the International Documentary Association.

The New York Times' Dave Itzkoff, who has been following the case closely for the Arts Beat blog at NYTimes.com, wrote:

The brief says the district court's ruling "was fundamentally flawed" in its interpretation of the 1999 case Gonzales v. NBC, in which the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that even confidential materials can be released if they are likely to be relevant to a significant issue in the case and are not reasonably obtainable elsewhere.

Judge Kaplan's ruling, the brief said, "effectively shifted the burden of alleged unfairness onto the filmmakers, rendering this circuit's requirement of a relevance showing meaningless," and "made it far too easy for Chevron to obtain far too much, precisely what Gonzales forbids."

In the June 1, 2010 amicus brief, Abrams writes more on Judge Kaplan's misreading of the Gonzalez case and gets to the the real heart of the matter:

The vast distance between the District Court's reading of Gonzales and its text and spirit is illustrated by the Court's emphasis in both its May 10 and May 20 orders on the proposition that, because the individual subjects captured in the outtake footage voluntarily chose to expose themselves to public scrutiny through the inevitable screening of a completed film, it would "not credit any assertion that the discovery of the outtakes by Petitioners would compromise the ability of Berlinger or, for that matter, any other film maker, to obtain material from individuals interested in confidential treatment." This analysis completely ignores the relationship between a documentary filmmaker and the individuals that he or she interviews; it assumes, wrongly, that the participants in such a project would see no difference between the public circulation of a final film painstakingly prepared and edited by the filmmaker who solicited their contribution and whom they entrusted with telling their story and the potentially unlimited display of their every word in a widely-publicized multi-billion dollar international litigation.

And lastly, last week ahead of today's hearing, NPR's All Things Considered covered the legal battle in a story called 'A 'Crude' Awakening: Chevron Vs. The Documentarian'. The story predictably gives Chevron lawyer Randy Mastro of Gibson Dunn and company spokesman Kent Robertson each a chance to weigh in with their cynical spin. After today's loss in the courts over their attempts to get at Berlinger's CRUDE outtakes, I'm sure they're huddling up to devise their next tactic in Chevron's treacherous strategy to deceive, deny, and delay... until it all goes away.

But the communities in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest have other plans, and have vowed to struggle until they get the justice that has been denied them so long.

And of course, Berlinger's legal battle isn't over. While the Circuit Court stayed the lower court's order to turn over all his raw footage to Chevron, Berlinger still has to argue his case on appeal. Want to help with the costly legal battle? Any amount you can donate to the CRUDE First Amendment legal defense fund is deeply appreciated.

And if you still haven't seen the explosive, award-winning documentary CRUDE, see it, and judge for yourself.

– Han
Han Shan is Coordinator of Amazon Watch's Clean Up Ecuador Campaign

Read More

Chevron attempting to pass the buck to Ecuador?

The Wall Street Journal published an article today (both in their print edition and online) looking at Chevron's latest maneuver to try to pass any liability stemming from the landmark environmental lawsuit against the company over to the government of Ecuador. This article appeared in print (below) but oddly, appeared originally as a different, longer version on its webpage. It turns out that somewhere in the editing process the Journal edited out quotes from a UC David Law Professor, Andrea Bjorklund, and a complete quote from Steven Donziger, attorney for the plaintiffs. Read below the print version of the story for the complete, original online version of the article:

The print version of the article:

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Chevron Files Suit Against Ecuador

Looking to Protect Itself in Longtime Battle, Oil Giant Seeks Aid Through Trade Pact

By BEN CASSELMAN and ANGEL GONZALEZ

Chevron Corp. is stepping up its offensive in its long-running legal battle in Ecuador, suing Ecuador's government under international trade law.

Chevron is the defendant in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that seeks to hold the company responsible for environmental damage allegedly caused by Texaco Inc., which Chevron bought in 2001. Chevron has denied the allegations.

Associated Press

Ecuadorean community leader Luis Yanza protests following a Chevron shareholders' meeting at the company's headquarters in San Ramon, Calif., last year. A lawsuit accuses Chevron of environmental damage in Ecuador.

Seeking to protect itself from what it says is likely to be an adverse ruling in Ecuador, the California-based oil giant said Wednesday it had filed suit under the terms of a 1997 trade pact between the U.S. and Ecuador. The suit amounts to a request for arbitration through a process set up by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law to adjudicate disagreements.

The arbitration process is separate from the original lawsuit, which will continue. But under its pact with the U.S., Ecuador must accept the arbitrators' rulings as binding under international law.

In its filing, Chevron argues Ecuador's government is responsible for any environmental damage and should pay any penalties assessed in the lawsuit, which could total $27 billion, according to a court-appointed expert. Chevron also asks that arbitrators force Ecuador's government to pay the company's legal fees and to award "moral damages" due to the government's alleged interference in the case, intimidation of Chevron representatives and other "outrageous and illegal conduct."

The move seeks to capitalize on the release last month of videos that Chevron says reveal a bribery scheme possibly involving the Ecuadorean judge who has been overseeing the lawsuit. Ecuador says it is investigating Chevron's allegations, as well as any potential involvement by Chevron in the scheme. The judge, who has sought to recuse himself from the case, has denied any wrongdoing, and the videos don't show him accepting or soliciting a bribe. On Tuesday, a local court ruled that the judge's withdrawal petition was "unfounded" and ordered him to stay in the case.

Chevron believes the controversy has given new weight to its claim that it cannot get a fair trial in Ecuador.

"We have believed for some time that it would be impossible for Chevron to get a fair hearing in Ecuador," Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate said.

Eric Bloom, a U.S. attorney representing Ecuador in the dispute, said Chevron has been trying to discredit Ecuador's judicial system for years, and he questioned the videos' authenticity.

"Chevron either got very, very lucky on the eve of a verdict and actually tripped across a legitimate concern, or they helped to stage-manage a fictitious event," Mr. Bloom said. "Both possibilities have to be investigated."

Chevron has denied doctoring the videos or participating in the scheme and has said it took steps to verify the videos' authenticity.

Steven Donziger, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, said the filing will have "minimal impact" on his case, but he said it is a sign Chevron is becoming desperate.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Chevron's decision to seek international arbitration is the latest example of the company's increasingly aggressive strategy in the case, which includes a Web site to rebut plaintiffs' claims and an effort to lobby Congress to revoke Ecuador's trade privileges because of the government's alleged interference in the dispute.

Since Chevron has almost no assets in Ecuador, the plaintiffs will have to seek enforcement of any ruling in their favor in the U.S. or another country where Chevron operates.

Separately, the international arbitration process could take years. In its arbitration filing, Chevron claims that by allowing the lawsuit to go forward, the Ecuadorean government is violating a 1998 agreement that released the U.S. company from environmental liability in return for a $40 million cleanup paid for by Texaco.

The plaintiffs, a group of Ecuadorean residents, argue their case has nothing to do with the Ecuadorean government, so the agreement doesn't apply to their lawsuit. Ecuador's government says it has no control over the judicial process, although Chevron has argued the Ecuadorean judiciary is heavily influenced by President Rafael Correa.

If arbitrators reject Chevron's argument, it could make it harder for the company to fight enforcement of an adverse ruling. But if arbitrators agree that Chevron has no liability, legal experts said, it will be very difficult for plaintiffs to collect on any damages outside Ecuador.

Corporations have increasingly turned to international arbitrators in recent years to resolve disputes with governments. Companies often see the arbitration process as fairer than local courts.

Write to Ben Casselman at ben.casselman@wsj.com and Angel Gonzalez at angel.gonzalez@dowjones.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B2

The Online Version of the article included quotes from Bjorklund:

Multinational corporations, including energy companies, have increasingly turned to international arbitrators in recent years to resolve disputes with governments. Companies often see the arbitration process as fairer than local courts. But Andrea Bjorklund, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said companies actually lose slightly more than half of their arbitration cases.

"By no means is it a given that (a company) is going to prevail," Prof. Bjorklund said.

And Donziger:

Steven Donziger, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, said the filing will have "minimal impact" on his case, but he said it is a sign Chevron is becoming desperate.

"They have suffered a series of consecutive legal defeats in courts in courts in both the United States and Ecuador, which is forcing them to search for an international forum that they think will be more sympathetic," Mr. Donziger said.

The entire, original online version of the article is included in a PDF here.

Read More

Jim Hightower: CHEVRON SOILS ITSELF

Interesting commentary about the Chevron-Ecuador lawsuit by Jim Hightower today - take a look over at: Jim Hightower | CHEVRON SOILS ITSELF

Hightower notes:
"For a quarter of a century, Chevron's Texaco subsidiary crudely and willfully contaminated the land, water and people of this region with an oil extraction process so crude, careless, and deadly that it still stands as one of the world's grossest examples of corporate insensitivity."

Powerful stuff.

Read More

Hatchet job for Chevron in this week’s Economist…

An article in the Economist this week totally misses the mark about Chevron's liability in Ecuador. Not only did the reporter fail Journalism 101 by failing to talk to ANYONE from the plaintiffs, he or she (Economist articles have no byline) repeated word for word Chevrons story. This is the response by one of the lawyers working on the case – it gives some perspective on what was missing from the Economist fable:

This article buys into almost all of Chevron's misleading talking points and does your readers a huge disservice. Further, the article has numerous factual inaccuracies that hide the fact Chevron believes no court, government, or law has a right to hold it accountable for creating a humanitarian crisis in the rainforest. Perhaps the most important fact is the obvious one – the article repeats Chevron talking points, while a Chevron advertisement intermittently sits above the article on the Economist website.

This is some of what you got wrong or was taken out of context, from the perspective of a lawyer working on the case:

It is indisputable that Texaco used the Amazon as a trash bin for the 26 years that it operated a large oil field in Ecuador. The company admits to dumping more than 16 billion gallons of toxic "water of formation" into Amazon waterways and leaving over 900 toxic waste pits that leach toxins into soils and groundwater to this day. Several independent, peer-reviewed studies (as opposed to Chevron's financed studies) show a strong elevation in cancer rates in the oil-producing region that are correlated to hydrocarbon contamination. There is indisputable evidence that the practices Texaco used in Ecuador had been outlawed for decades in the U.S. Texaco's practices violated Ecuadorian law, U.S. law, industry custom, the company's contract with Ecuador's government, and basic human decency. More than 1,400 people have died of cancer, according to empirical data based on a court survey. Several indigenous groups have had their cultures decimated. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. court in 1993, is about seeking compensation from the company for these damages.

You totally missed Chevron's bad faith in the litigation. Chevron fought for nine years to move the trial to Ecuador from U.S. courts. It submitted 14 expert affidavits praising Ecuador's courts as fair and adequate. It agreed to submit to jurisdiction in Ecuador and be bound by any ruling there as a condition of the case being transferred. Only when the trial evidence in Ecuador began to point to Chevrons' culpability did those same courts suddenly become unfit for Chevron. The company tries to delay, attack, and distract because the evidence shows 100% of the former Texaco sites are highly contaminated with cancer-causing carcinogens. Chevron also has launched lobbying campaigns in Washington and Quito to help it accomplish in the political arena what it cannot accomplish under the rule of law – namely, engineer a victory via political pressure. What bothers Chevron about Ecuador's President is that he won't do its bidding, he won't interfere in the litigation, and he won't cut a side deal with the company unlike other Presidents from years past that allowed Texaco to run roughshod over the country's citizens.

Chevron's remediation, the basis of its "defense" at trial, was a total sham. At 100% of the so-called "remediated" sites inspected during the trial, high levels of toxins in soil and water have been confirmed by independent laboratories. Chevron created bogus laboratory results to "certify" the pits as cleaned, leading to a criminal indictment of two former Texaco lawyers. The "release" received by Chevron for the so-called remediation excludes the private claims of the type being litigated in the lawsuit. Chevron is lying to shareholders and journalists when it claims it was "released" – no court in the world has ever accepted Chevron's argument on this point, despite being presented countless times over the last 13 years.

Finally, the court-appointed expert maligned in your article is one of the most respected environmental consultants in Ecuador. He is so good that Chevron paid him as its expert in an earlier phase of the case. He worked with a team of 14 independent scientists to come up with a damages assessment. More than 25 scientists have reviewed the assessment and found its conclusions reasonable and the damages figure consistent with other large environmental clean-ups. Your claim that Texaco made less than $500 million profit is preposterous and illustrates your shoddy research. That amount was made by Texpet, Texaco's fourth-tier subsidiary in Ecuador. Texaco itself made an estimated $25 to $30 billion in profit in Ecuador.

Let's be clear – the Economist approached this story with a bias, and never contacted a representative of the communities. Chevron is a leading advertiser for the Economist. You owe your readers an explanation.

Read More

Chevron caught manipulating media…

By the New York Times no less…the paper today picked up how Chevron has tried to manipulate the media: When Chevron Hires Ex-Reporter to Investigate Pollution, Chevron Looks Good.

But the times missed the real story and lets Chevron off the hook about how the company totally and completely fails to disclose that they paid for the piece in any aspect of the "report" put out by local Chevron pet reporter Gene Randall. Take a look at this press release describing the real story here:

Chevron Produces Phony Online News Coverage to Spread Misinformation about Ecuador Disaster

Oil Giant Fails to Disclose That It Paid for "News" Video Narrated by Former CNN Correspondent Gene Randall

Amazon Defense Coalition
3 May 2009 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or karen [at] hintoncommunications.com

To obtain additional background about Chevron's oil contamination in Ecuador, click here to download a press kit

Washington, D.C. (May 3, 2009) –To promote a misinformation campaign about its role in the oil contamination of a pristine area of the rainforest in Ecuador, Chevron recently produced a video that copies the format and style of television news shows and portrays Texaco, now owned by Chevron, as completely blameless in the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon jungle.

Chevron has bought online advertising on Google to promote the 13-minute video ahead of the airing tonight of a 60 Minutes segment, reported by Scott Pelley, that is expected to expose the company's complicity in what is considered the world's worst oil-related contamination. Chevron never reveals it paid for the video, which is designed to look like an "objective" CNN news report and is narrated by former CNN correspondent and current corporate consultant Gene Randall.

Two environmental groups are blasting Chevron and Randall for engaging in the deceptive practice of producing a corporate news video that looks like a news broadcast. They called on Chevron to stop airing the video until the company makes a full disclosure.

"Chevron is using false information in this deceptive video to mislead the public, its own shareholders, and Chevron employees about its responsibility for an environmental disaster of epic proportions," Mitch Anderson, Corporate Accountability Campaigner at Amazon Watch, an environmental advocacy group in San Francisco.

"Randall should be ashamed to lend his credibility built up over years as a legitimate journalist to an oil company trying evade accountability for a disaster that is literally killing off indigenous groups and destroying the rainforest," added Anderson.

"If I were CNN, I would be furious because Randall essentially is getting paid by Chevron to use and dilute CNN's brand without permission."

Click here to view the video.

Chevron faces a potential civil liability of up to $27 billion for the Ecuador contamination in an epic 15-year trial in Ecuador's courts brought by dozens of indigenous groups and farmer communities. The damages assessment was produced by a team of 15 experts and is contained in a 4,000 page court report that analyzed the evidence in the case and places blame squarely on Chevron for the problems.

A final decision on the case is expected later this year.

The trial is taking place in Ecuador at Chevron's request after it was transferred from U.S. federal court in 2002. At the time, Chevron submitted numerous sworn affidavits praising the fairness of Ecuador's courts, although with a decision in the case imminent the company now claims those same courts are treating it unfairly.

The Chevron corporate video uses paid Chevron consultants and employees who cite discredited information consistent with the company's talking points on the case, said Karen Hinton, a U.S.-based spokesperson for the rainforest communities. Randall advertises himself as a producer and narrator of corporate videos with a "news flavor". (For more information about Randall, click here)

The Ecuadorian man who has led the communities in the battle against Chevron said the company should either pull the ad or inform viewers it produced it.

"Telling the truth isn't easy for Chevron because the company has put out much misinformation about the harm Texaco did to my country and its people," said Luis Yanza, President of the Amazon Defense Coalition, an Ecuadorian group that represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The hiring of Randall is not the first time Chevron has tried to use the veneer of the news media to promote its misinformation campaign. Chevron paid a little-known San Francisco-based online newspaper publisher, Pat Murphy, to write positive news article about Chevron in Ecuador without revealing Murphy was paid. Collaborating with Murphy has been the online blogger Zennie Abraham, known as Zennie 62, who parrots Chevron's talking points in his blogs. (For more information regarding Chevron's use of Pat Murphy and Zennie Abraham as proxies to dissiminate the company's propaganda, click here and here

Chevron has not denied charges that it funnels money to seemingly independent journalists, including Murphy and Abraham, to post what appears to be editorial content that is actually paid advertising.

The Chevron video misleads viewers on several important elements of the lawsuit, as demonstrated by evidence in the 4,000-page report prepared by a team of court experts, said Anderson. Some of the misleading facts are as follows:

• The video quotes Pedro Alvarez, a Chevron consultant, as saying the contamination in Ecuador poses no risk to public health. In fact, several parties – including Chevron – have found dangerous contaminants and carcinogens such as Chromium VI at levels thousands of times higher than allowed by law in Ecuador.
  
• The video falsely claims Texaco earned $490 million in profits from Ecuador. In reality, Texaco earned between $25 billion and $30 billion; Texaco's fourth-tier subsidiary, Texpet, earned $490 million.
  
• The video falsely claims the case was brought under law passed in 1999, after Texaco left Ecuador. In fact, it was brought under a provision of Ecuador's civil code dating to 1861 – a fact Chevron has admitted in court.
  
• The video claims Ecuador's courts are "unfair" but fails to reveal that the charge was made only after the evidence at trial started to point to Chevron's culpability. It also fails to disclose that Chevron argued as recently as 2007 in another case that Ecuador's courts are an adequate forum.
  
• The video claims that Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo, who has won a CNN "Hero" Award for his work on the case, tried to stop Ecuador's state-owned oil company from cleaning Texaco's contaminated sites. In fact, Fajardo tried to get that company to clean the sites properly rather than just cover them with dirt.
  
• Chevron tries to claim the health impacts such as cancers are caused by fecal matter in the water. There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that fecal matter causes cancer.
  
• The video lies when it claims that the billions of gallons of water of formation dumped by Texaco were "treated" before discharge. In fact, Chevron's own environmental audits, in evidence in the case, show the water contained carcinogens and was not treated.
  

Click here for more information:

###

Read More

And probably worth mentioning…

That Chevron's actions in Ecuador were highlighted in a piece on 60 Minutes Sunday night:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Read More

Interesting Story on NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103233560

While Juan Forero does a nice job of recounting the horrific environmental contamination in Ecuador's Amazon, his reporting of President Rafeal Correa's comments on the humanitarian crisis afflicting the region wrongly imply that President Correa has somehow influenced the trial in Ecuador. This is an inaccurate and misleading construction of Correa's comments, which were taken out of context, and buys directly into Chevron's propaganda about the case.

Politicians comment about trials all the time in countries around the world for a variety of political reasons. It doesn't mean they are "interfering" with the trial which takes in the judicial branch, independent of the executive branch. President George W. Bush's administration commented frequently about ongoing trials, from issuing statements on the lawsuits against insurance companies in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster to commenting on the urgency of intervention in the Terry Schiavo "right to life" cases. President Obama comments all the time about the behavior of banks and insurance companies in the economic crisis, while many of those institutions are targets of litigation. No serious person alleges that public comments of either of these Presidents somehow has biased those legal actions and made the judiciary incompetent. Any suggestion from Chevron that Correa's comments make the courts in Ecuador partial underlies a certain colonial-tinged racism regarding the competence of the Ecuadorian judiciary, despite the fact that U.S. courts have frequently found Ecuadorian courts to be perfectly competent courts to hear these cases. In fact, the exact case against Chevron started in a U.S. court and was only transferred to Ecuador at Chevron's request, over the objection of the plaintiffs, after the U.S. judge found Ecuador's courts to be a competent venue for hearing the case.

Beyond offering a few statements by Correa that express sympathy for the victims of this environmental crime, and outrage at the perpetrators of it, neither Forrero nor Chevron can point to a single instance of executive interference with the court hearing the case. In fact, every piece of evidence points to the opposite: Correa has personally, on several occasions denied any interference in the Aguinda trial, and has continually reasserted that the Ecuadorian courts are free from interference by the Executive or Legislative branches. The Attorney General of Ecuador has repeatedly and publicly defended the independence of the judiciary in Ecuador against attempts to interfere in the lawsuit against Chevron by – surprise – Chevron itself, which has lobbied government officials in Quito and Washington to quash the case via political pressure. Evidence has emerged that the very first day of the trial in Ecuador – October 21, 2003 – Chevron pressured Ecuador's then Attorney General to request that the trial judge illegally dismiss the case. Perhaps most telling, Chevron itself, as recently as 2006 (after Correa came to power) has asked U.S. courts to transfer other, unrelated cases about the health impact of oil contamination to the very same courts in Ecuador that they claim are so biased against them.

A comment by a President expressing sympathy for a group of his constituents suffering from a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions is entirely appropriate. These expressions of support have are entirely appropriate, and have nothing to do with an ongoing litigation that deals with complex factual and legal matters. Don't be fooled by Chevron's propaganda – the company is getting the fair trial they said they would when they argued to have the case transferred out of U.S. federal court and into Ecuador.

Read More

Film Documenting Chevron’s Toxic Legacy in Ecuador Gaining Momentum

Crude, the documentary at the Sundance film festival we blogged about earlier this week seems to be getting some huge momentum. Over the past week we've seen a ton of stories come across our computer about the film, the outpouring of celebrity support for the film and for the people who are suffering from Chevron's pollution. There just seems to be a ton of buzz around the film – the NY Times, Page 6, US Weekly, People, the Associated Press, FoxNews, and other news outlets all wrote about the film. And now that I've seen the film, we've can understand why. While the movie is remarkably even-handed in its portrayal of the issue, the film does the one thing Chevron has tried to stop more than anything else: it simply shows the facts. And even though the film goes to great lengths to be unbiased, it'll be incredibly difficult for anyone to walk away from a screening of the film feeling anything but disgust for Chevron.

Lucy Danziger, editor of Self Magazine, blogged about their magazine's sponsorship of a party honoring the film. An excerpt:

Here is why I was in Park City: to host a dinner in honor of Trudie Styler, who is championing the cause of a little known but disastrous oil spill in Ecuador that needs to be cleaned up. Chevron, the company at the center of the dispute, has not stepped up to take the lead. The spill occurred a generation ago, when Texaco was the dumper, but Chevron owns the former company and isn't willing to pay to clean up the mess.

Meanwhile, the people of Ecuador are getting sick, developing rare cancers at alarming rates, and the water supply is so tainted that Styler is trying to bring in rain-collecting systems and installing them throughout the villages in order to give the women, children and families an alternative to the tainted water supply. UNICEF first got her involved, and she not only visited the spill site and was in the center of the documentary Crude (it's directed by the talented Joe Berlinger and produced by Entendre films and Netflix), but she also has helped to get 60 schools built and offered educational resources to More than 700 children who, when she first visited the region, worked in toxic-waste dumps.

To read more, check out: http://www.self.com/magazine/blogs/lucysblog.

Read More