Chevron's Academic Corruption Over Ecuador Pollution Spreads to NYU School of Law

Chevron's recruitment of academics to promote the oil giant's increasingly hapless attempts to defend its Ecuador pollution disaster appears to have compromised the ethics of two more professors at a prominent institution of higher learning. This time, the credibility blow handed out by Chevron is being suffered by New York University.

We recently exposed how a Notre Dame human rights law professor, Douglas Cassel, was shilling on behalf of Chevron and compromising the academic integrity of his university without disclosing the extent of his relationship with the oil giant or the amount of money he was receiving. Since our expose appeared, Cassel has not written further about the Ecuador matter.

What we know on the NYU front is that Professor Linda J. Silberman, an expert in transnational litigation who has been teaching at NYU School of Law since the 1980s, is using her post to quietly shadow block on behalf of Chevron to prevent long-suffering Ecuadorian rainforest villagers from recovering their $9.5 billion environmental judgment. Silberman's role in the litigation -- managed by the outside Chevron law firm Jones Day -- is part of a larger campaign by the company to evade accountability for the deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the rainforest when it operated in Ecuador (under the Texaco brand) from 1964 to 1992.

The facts of Chevron's reckless misconduct have been confirmed by three layers of courts in Ecuador, including by the country's Supreme Court in a unanimous 222-page decision issued in 2013. That decision meticulously documented extensive pollution that continues to contaminate groundwater and surface water at hundreds of former Chevron production sites covering a huge swath of rainforest that is home to five indigenous groups. A sixth group, the Tetete, disappeared shortly after Texaco arrived on the scene in the early 1960s. Chevron insisted the trial be held in Ecuador and repeatedly praised the country's court system to get the venue shifted out of the U.S.

Almost five decades after the oil production started, Chevron's horrendous operational practices in Ecuador have resulted in skyrocketing cancer rates that have decimated local communities and killed or harmed thousands of people. Chevron executive Rodrigo Perez Pallares flat-out admitted during the Ecuador trial that the company discharged more than 15 billion gallons of toxic waste into streams and rivers that local inhabitants rely on for their drinking water. More than 100 technical evidentiary reports -- most provided by Chevron technicians -- backed up the claims of the villagers. (A summary of the extensive evidence against Chevron relied on by Ecuador's courts is here.)

Silberman's cameo role in this fiasco came to our attention recently when an unpublished essay she authored with an NYU colleague, Aaron Simowitz, arrived in our inbox. Available here, the essay was distributed to an internet community focused on "dispute management" in the energy sector.

We were stunned to notice the complete absence of a proper conflict of interest disclosure in the essay by Silberman and her co-author explaining their ties to Chevron and its law firms in the Ecuador litigation. Both are clearly violating NYU's Code of Ethical Conduct, as we explain below.

At the end of the essay, Silberman meekly notes she is a consultant to the Chevron law firm Jones Day. Really now. Jones Day has played a critical and highly controversial role fighting the indigenous groups with corrupt tactics -- including the use of bribes and the secret videotaping of a trial judge. Jones Day and its lead partner Tim Cullen have reaped millions of dollars in fees for so-called "services" that include paying the rent and laundry bills of a corrupt Chevron operative (Diego Borja) after he was spirited out of Ecuador to live under Chevron's protection in the United States.

Clearly, the exact nature of the Jones Day relationship to Silberman might be something NYU's students and faculty need to know to be able to assess the credibility of her "scholarship" and teaching about the litigation. She might also mention how much Jones Day is paying her to lend her academic credibility as an NYU professor to Chevron's strategy to block the Ecuadorians from entering the courthouse in Canada, where they are trying to seize company assets to pay for their environmental remediation.

Junior writing partner Simowitz has the same problem. He "discloses" at the end of the essay that he used to work for the law firm Gibson Dunn. What he fails to mention is that Gibson Dunn is Chevron's lead outside counsel in the case and was hired to deploy at least 114 lawyers to viciously attack the main U.S. legal advisor to the Ecuadorians, Steven Donziger. Chevron's goal was to kill the case by using false and distorted evidence, a paid fact witness who lied about a supposed bribe, and outright intimidation. (For more on Chevron's unprecedented retaliation campaign, see this article in Rolling Stone, this analysis of how Chevron made a mockery of justice in a U.S. court, and this legal brief by Donziger's counsel Deepak Gupta that summarizes how Chevron abused the civil justice system.)

The lack of disclosure in the Silberman/Simowitz essay is one problem. The intellectual dishonesty by these so-called scholars is another.

In the article, Silberman and Simowitz claim that Canada's Supreme Court got it "wrong" when it ruled unanimously in September that the villagers have the right to try to seize Chevron's assets in that country to satisfy their judgment. The only reason the villagers are trying to seize those assets in Canada is because Chevron -- after 11 years of litigation in its preferred forum of Ecuador -- refuses to pay the judgment despite accepting jurisdiction there as a condition of moving the case out of New York in 2001. Chevron also sold off its assets in Ecuador during the trial as the evidence mounted against it, leaving those affected with almost no options to collect.

Silberman and Simowitz fail to mention that Chevron announced years ago that it would fight the villagers "until hell freezes over" and then "skate it out on the ice." Once it became clear Ecuador's courts might actually hold the company accountable, Chevron's lawyers tried desperately to sabotage Ecuador's court process as we mentioned. The company played an abusive game of forum shopping and sued Ecuador's government in a secret arbitration proceeding that excluded the villagers to try to obtain a taxpayer-funded bailout of its pollution liability.

Instead of explaining this critical context to their readers, the authors attack the Canada Supreme Court's decision on conclusory technical grounds by promoting a legal fiction created by Chevron. The authors repeat Chevron's losing argument before the Canada Court that it would impose a "substantial burden" to force an oil company with $250 billion in annual revenue to defend the Ecuador judgment in Canada because all of its assets there -- estimated to be worth $15 billion -- are held by a wholly-owned subsidiary. The Canada Supreme Court rejected this argument in very plain language by explaining Chevron does have assets in Canada via its subsidiary.

While we believe the Chevron defense promoted by Silberman is preposterous -- any Chevron-owned subsidiary logically is a Chevron asset that can be used to pay off a Chevron debt  -- at a minimum the oil giant's claim will be litigated in Canada now that the Court has ruled the case can proceed. Yet according to Silberman and Simowitz, this technical defense should block the enforcement action from even commencing. Given that Chevron operates around the world only through its subsidiaries, their argument is a stab at obtaining complete impunity for a corporate human rights abuser.

While Silberman and Simowitz have a right to make an intellectually dishonest argument in support of Chevron's abusive litigation strategy, they don't have a right to make it without disclosing their conflicts of interest or otherwise ignoring their ethical obligations in violation of NYU's written Code of Ethical Conduct.

NYU's ethics policy prevents conflicts of interest and requires all faculty to uphold the "highest professional and community ethical standards." We suggest Silberman disclose how much she is making for promoting Chevron's arguments, how long she has been on the Chevron dole, whether Jones Day passes on the costs of Silberman's work to Chevron, and so on. She should disclose whether lawyers at Chevron or Jones Day have the right to review her supposedly "independent" analyses before they are published or otherwise distributed. Her contract with Jones Day and communications with the law firm pertinent to the Chevron matter should be fully disclosed. The same goes for Simowitz and his relationships with Gibson Dunn or any other Chevron law firm.

The writers notably fail to mention that Gibson Dunn lawyers from Simowitz's former firm have committed all manner of ethical violations on behalf of Chevron. This includes the illegal payment of more $2 million to a fact witness for his false testimony, an attempted bribe of the trial judge, using the discovery process to harass the oil company's adversaries, and threatening judges in Ecuador with jail time if they did not grant Chevron motions to nullify the proceeding. Was Simowitz connected to these activities when he worked at Gibson Dunn? Certainly his readers and students have a right to know. (For more on Chevron's attempts to corrupt the judicial process in Ecuador, see this affidavit and these whistleblower videos.)

Again, we question whether these otherwise reputable professors would engage this issue in this way had they not been paid by Chevron or its surrogates.

The issue of corporate corruption of academia has been a hot topic in recent weeks. The New York Times recently exposed how Monsanto pays academics to launder company agitprop to block the labeling of genetically modified foods. A major academic at the Brookings Institute recently lost his job after Sen. Elizabeth Warren nailed him for failing to disclose to Congress that his flawed research was funded by a pro-business lobbying group.

Chevron has a long history in the Ecuador matter of trying to secretly pay academics in service of its litigation positions. The company has hired a global warming skeptic named Douglas Southgate, a former lobbyist for the chemical industry named Ralph Marquez, and a technical consultant named John Conner who wrote a field manual ordering company scientists to lift only "clean" soil samples during the Ecuador trial to hide contamination from the court.

NYU's faculty needs to ensure that Silberman and Simowitz comply with the university's Code of Ethical Conduct. They should be prohibited from trying to hide partisan advocacy in the clothing of independent scholarship. Most of all, they should be barred from letting Chevron stealthily capitalize on NYU's good name to evade accountability for its abuses in the rainforest.

We look forward to see whether NYU as an institution has the backbone to address the very obvious ethical lapses of two of its leading professors.

(Another prominent faculty member at NYU School of Law, Burt Neuborne, has been a stalwart defender of the rights of the Ecuadorian villagers and has represented them pro bono.  Two of Neuborne's legal briefs for the villagers can be found here and here.)

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Ricardo Reis Veiga: The Architect of Chevron's Fraud In Ecuador

Chevron CEO John Watson is the one person ultimately responsible for his company's refusal to abide by the rule of law and pay a $9.5 billion court judgment for toxic dumping in Ecuador's rainforest.

But we cannot forget that another high-level Chevron executive currently in Watson's employ --Ricardo Reis Veiga -- did much of Chevron's corrupt "dirty work" in the South American nation and deserves to be held accountable for his leading role in the misconduct. The fact Watson continues to protect Reis Veiga reflects poorly not only on Watson's own lax ethical standards, but it also creates significant risk to company shareholders as we will see below.

First day of Ecuador trial -- October 21, 2003: Chevron's Reis Veiga tries to explain the impossible while his Israeli bodyguard casts a wary eye from behind. Photo by Lou Dematteis.

For years in the 1990s, Reis Veiga was known in Ecuador as the "architect" of the Chevron-Texaco fraud. As Texaco's main lawyer on the case, he was indicted after the villagers presented information about how he had "certified" a fake clean-up to to Ecuador's government in a desperate effort to help the company evade liability. Under pressure from Chevron, prosecutors dropped the criminal charges but the cold hard facts about Reis Veiga's corruption cannot so easily be erased.

(See here for more background on Reis Veiga's checkered past in Ecuador and here for Chevron's attempt to corrupt Ecuador's courts using American drug trafficking felon Wayne Hanson.)

Watson and Chevron's public relations flaks try mightily to keep Reis Veiga out of the public eye. But Watson is more than happy to keep him on the Chevron payroll, no doubt so he won't blow the whistle on the company. (A Chevron whistleblower earlier this year disclosed internal videos showing company scientists trying to hide evidence of oil contamination from the court.)

A lawyer and Brazilian national, Reis Veiga set in motion Chevron's disastrous Ecuador policy when in 1995 he negotiated a "remediation" agreement on behalf of Texaco with certain corrupt officials in the government. (Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and assumed its liability in Ecuador.) The agreement allowed Texaco to go through the cosmetic motions of a clean-up while spending virtually no money to address the underlying environmental impacts. Those impacts include the abandonment of roughly 1,000 toxic waste pits filled with oil sludge and the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic "water of production" into streams and rivers relied on by local inhabitants for their drinking water.

In exchange for a promise to do a cosmetic clean-up, Texaco received a "release" from Ecuador's government for any claims the government might assert against the company for the environmental damage. The release was given before the first shovel was even put in the ground to do the work. (As a critical aside, the release did not bar -- nor could it under Ecuadorian law -- the claims of the private citizens who had brought the historic lawsuit that 16 years later resulted in the judgment.)

The more salient point is that Reis Veiga's "remediation" was shot through with fraud. Texaco spent only $40 million to address the massive contamination which included hundreds of equivalent U.S. Superfund sites. This is far less than a penny on the dollar of what a real clean-up would cost, according to the later court judgment and various independent analyses. Texaco also spent about one-tenth of one percent of the roughly $50 billion BP has allocated to its much smaller 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

While Chevron now spends millions of dollars on ads claiming it supports the communities where it operates, Reis Veiga negotiated a deal to screw the affected communities of Ecuador.

What had to surprise Chevron and Reis Veiga is that the trial in Ecuador over the company's dumping -- a trial that the company fought desperately to block -- actually happened. The indigenous communities had the wherewithal to hire lawyers and the funds to hire technical experts. Evidence against Chevron quickly started to mount. And as a result, a Chevron lie that already was visible to the naked eye in the oil fields was verified in laboratories as well.

Scientific sampling data from field inspections during the trial in Ecuador showed exorbitant rates of cancer-causing petroleum hydrocarbons at sites Reis Veiga had claimed were cleaned. As an example, at Sacha 65 -- a former Chevron well site that Reis Veiga had certified as remediated to Ecuador's government back in 1998 -- a soil sample lifted during the trial had 35,380 ppm of petroleum hydrocarbons. That's more than 350 times higher than the maximum amount allowed in most U.S. states. It also exceeded Ecuador's regulatory norms by an order of magnitude.

In fact, there were 54 separate sites supposed "remediated" under the Reis Veiga plan that were inspected during the later trial. All demonstrated the presence of harmful toxins and all but two were above Ecuadorian regulatory norms. Some exceeded the norms by dozens and even hundreds of multiples.

By its own admission, Chevron applied its wholly inadequate clean-up methods to only a small portion of the waste pits it abandoned in Ecuador. Chevron simply excluded 85% of the pits from its flawed action plan altogether. Those pits were left to continue contaminating soils and drinking water for centuries absent compliance with the Ecuador court judgment.

Even if one focuses only on the small fraction of waste pits Chevron took responsibility for under Reis Veiga's plan, many of those were left untouched on the theory they were being used by villagers for fishing. Others were left untouched based on a simple drive-by inspection that involved no actual soil testing. In actuality, all were filled with oil sludge.

For the pits it did address, Chevron used heavy earth-moving equipment to cover up the sludge with dirt without cleaning out the toxins. Reis Veiga's plan was to bury evidence of the crime for the lowest possible cost. He never imagined these hidden pits would be unearthed by scientists working for the villagers during the later trial.

Reis Veiga also duped Ecuador's government. During the negotiation over the clean-up plan, he conspired with certain officials to adopt a clean-up standard for petroleum hydrocarbons 50 times more lax than the typical U.S. regulatory norm. He then used a bogus soil sampling test to measure contamination that captured only a tiny fraction -- often less than one percent -- of the hydrocarbons present. His goal was to "certify" the pits as safe using the fraudulent sampling results. (For more on Chevron's use of the bogus test and its other scientific fraud in Ecuador, see here.)

For the communities in the affected region, Chevron's Potemkin clean-up actually made the matter worse. Many villagers moved next to the newly covered waste pits thinking Texaco must have been acting in good faith when it told locals it was remediating. That's just a sickening level of cruelty even for a company recently named the worst global corporation at a ceremony in Davos.

Aside from the outright fraud in the design and execution of the Reis Veiga plan, the Chevron executive did nothing to address the separate impacts of the billions of gallons of benzene-laden water of production that were discharged into streams and rivers. Reis Veiga also ignored the need for medical care and monitoring to deal with skyrocketing rates of cancer and other oil-related diseases.

The longterm environmental and human toll of this failure to remediate has been staggering. The affected area, home to dozens of impoverished indigenous and farmer communities, has extremely high rates of childhood leukemia and other cancers. There is also virtually no medical care. To be treated for cancer, once has to jump on a bus and travel several hours over tortuous mountain roads to Quito. (Numerous independent studies documenting the cancer can be accessed here. For photos and stories of some of the victims, see this gripping report in The Huffington Post by photojournalist Lou Dematteis.)

The economic impacts also have gutted the communities. While Watson makes approximately $30 million per year in compensation, the average indigenous person in the Amazon is lucky to pull in $1,000. That's after Chevron robbed the communities of access to clean water and most of the other non-monetary riches found on rainforest ancestral lands.

Reis Veiga's misconduct was not limited to the bogus remediation. During the trial, he was heavily involved in the halting of a critical judicial inspection (see paragraphs 18 to 27 of the referenced document) by fabricating a security threat against Chevron lawyers. His fingerprints were all over the work of Chevron consultant John Connor when he wrote a field manual directing company scientists to lift soil samples only from "clean" spots far away from sources of pollution in an attempt to deceive the court.

Given this outrageous and patently criminal conduct, why is Reis Veiga still employed at Chevron?

The reality is that an oil company management team acting Mafi-style in Ecuador cannot afford to let its skeletons migrate out of the closet. This is the same company that recently employed the author of a legal memo (William J. Haynes) justifying the torture of detainees when he was an official at the Pentagon. Other egregious Chevron wrongdoers in the Ecuador matter, such as discredited witnesses Diego Borja and Alberto Guerra, are kept close with fat salaries, homes in gated communities on golf courses, stipends for spouses and family members, and all sorts of luxury perks such as first class air travel that are hidden from shareholders and the public.

Then there are the academics who have humiliated themselves and compromised the integrity of their institutions by trying to defend Chevron's atrocities in Ecuador in exchange for money -- people such as Notre Dame Law Professor Douglas Cassel, Dr. Douglas Southgate of the climate change-denying Heartland Institute, and Dr. Pedro J. Alvarez of Rice University. Their involvement comes from the same dark place in Chevron's legal department where ethical rot has taken hold under the leadership of General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate, and where Reis Veiga hangs out.

Chevron's Board of Directors -- notorious for its lack of independence given that Watson himself is Chairperson -- is letting an environmental liability turn into a major business problem. Company operations in Canada and elsewhere are under seige as the villagers try to collect on their judgment by targeting Chevron's assets. In Canada, the company has an estimated $15 billion worth of refineries, oil fields, office buildings, and intellectual property rights.

Not to be glib, but we suspect the indigenous people of Ecuador are going to own a good chunk of that portfolio if the company does not abide by its legal obligations.

We are still waiting for any sign that the Chevron Board will take the necessary steps to fulfill its fiduciary obligations. It might start much as BP did in the Gulf -- by immediately paying compensation to those affected. It might follow up by ordering an independent review of the legal violations involved -- including the possible bribery of foreign officials -- in the desperate attempts by high-level company officers and employees to extricate themselves from this problem.

On behalf of Texaco and now Chevron, Reis Veiga executed a strategy in Ecuador of cover-up rather than clean-up. The disturbing facts are part of the plain history of Chevron's billion-dollar campaign to obtain impunity.

(For the evidence of Chevron's environmental catastrophe and fraudulent clean-up, see this power point presentation by the former scientist for the affected communities. For a summary of Chevron's forum shopping and jurisdictional shell game, see here. For more on Chevron's efforts to corrupt the Ecuador trial process, see this sworn affidavit and these counterclaims.)

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Chevron's Defense In Canada: The Abusive Litigation Strategy Continues

As we predicted, Chevron's jurisdictional shell game to evade its legal obligations to the people of Ecuador has now hit the courts of Canada with full force.

One might remember statements by various Chevron officials a few years ago that the company planned to fight the villagers it poisoned in Ecuador until "hell freezes over, and then skate it out on the ice." This blog describes one way the company tries to make it work in practice.

No doubt that Chevron's filing last week in Toronto of its written defense to efforts by impoverished rainforest villagers to enforce their judgment in Canada is a victory of sorts in that the company tried for three years to block the case from even proceeding.  The villagers had to go all the way to Canada's Supreme Court to force the oil major onto the playing field where neutral judges can actually analyze its outrageous claims. (For more on the unanimous Supreme Court decision and why it poses significant new risk for Chevron, see here.)

That's the good news. The bad news is that the villagers and their counsel once again might have to jump through the same old hoops to convince yet another trial court not to fall prey to Chevron's shell game. These are the same hoops the villagers and their lawyers have been forced to navigate ad infinitum since their claims against Chevron were originally filed in 1993.

For Chevron, the goal in this matter is simple: litigation in perpetuity. The company sold off its assets in Ecuador when it saw the evidence mount against it. The company clearly believes it is cheaper to fight the people it poisoned than to pay for a remediation of their ancestral lands and much-needed cancer treatment. Chevron clearly does not much care whether it loses any particular legal issue as long as its long-term strategy of delay remains viable.

True to this strategy, Chevron lawyers Clarke Hunter and Benjamin Zarnett are using the filing in Canada to repeat the discredited half-truths and outright lies used by Chevron to cover up and distract attention from its environmental crimes and fraud in Ecuador. Said wrongdoing by Chevron has been meticulously documented by more than 100 scientific evidentiary studies of the contamination. Three layers of courts (including five justices on the Supreme Court) in the South American nation have affirmed the fundamental fact of Chevron's liability. (For a summary of the evidence against Chevron, see here. For a summary of Chevron's cancer problem in Ecuador, see here. For the Ecuador Supreme Court decision, see here.)

Chevron's Canada defense makes it clear that the company plans to coax Canadian courts into the trap of re-litigating numerous procedural and substantive issues already decided by courts in Ecuador in the country where Chevron insisted the trial be held.

While the affected communities of Ecuador continue to suffer the shocking health and economic impacts of Chevron's contamination, consider the company's new machinations to delay relief:

• After vigorously fighting the case in Ecuador's courts for 11 years, Chevron now wants Canada's courts to let it re-litigate whether the company was subject to jurisdiction during that entire time. In its submission, Chevron conveniently fails to mention that it voluntarily stipulated to jurisdiction in Ecuador. Ecuador's courts already ruled against the company on this issue. Chevron knows this claim is a loser, but it will use it to try to buy months of delay if Canada's courts let it.
• Chevron also claims that a new statute in Ecuador which became law in 1999 (the Environmental Management Act) and was used by the villagers for procedural purposes was applied retroactively in violation of the country's Constitution. In fact, the substantive claims of the case against Chevron in Ecuador are based on a civil statute dating to 1861. Again, Chevron lost this issue in the courts of Ecuador. It is a certain loser in Canada, but of course that's not the point for the oil giant.
• In another attempt to muck up the Canadian proceeding, Chevron is asking the court to rule that the sham "remediation" it conducted in Ecuador in the mid-1990s that resulted in a release for the company from Ecuador's government should bar the private lawsuit of the villagers. Yet the villagers were not a party to the release and cannot be bound by it. Ecuador's courts rejected Chevron's claim in this regard at every turn. So has an international investor arbitration panel convened by Chevron. Again, this is an opportunity for Chevron to buy time.
• In what could be its most audacious demand, Chevron is urging Canada's courts to blindly accept the highly flawed findings from the "racketeering" show trial of U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Not only does Kaplan's ruling against the villagers completely contradict the Supreme Court of Ecuador, it is also wrong on the merits. The judge showed his hostility toward the Ecuadorians repeatedly, accepted Chevron's falsified evidence, and refused to even read the Ecuador trial court judgment. More than 35 law scholars from nine countries have filed a brief urging Kaplan's reversal. (For background on the many flaws in Kaplan's decision, see here and here.)

In a contest between Kaplan's judicial imperialism v. Ecuador's Supreme Court, we are siding with Ecuador's Supreme Court and we suspect Canada's courts will too.

Interestingly, Chevron lawyers Hunter and Zarnett are going all in-in on Chevron's corrupt and discredited witness, Alberto Guerra. In the company's defense submission, they repeat Guerra's lies -- made after Chevron paid him $2 million for his testimony -- that the plaintiffs "ghostwrote" the trial court judgment. That allegation has been completely disproven by Guerra's ever-changing testimony and a recent computer forensic analysis. (For background on the Guerra corruption issue, see here.)

Of course, Chevron hopes the day where Guerra has to testify under oath in Canada will never come. The company's plan is for Canada's courts to get so bogged down in the minutia of Ecuadorian law and procedure that the merits of Chevron's horrific contamination in the rainforest and fraudulent cover-up will never see the light of day. The goal is for the lawyers for the villagers to run out of funds before Guerra's bluff is called under oath before a neutral judge.

Canada's courts should be careful not to become complicit in Chevron's attempts to use the country's judicial resources to continue its abusive global demonization campaign. After waiting for 22 years, Ecuador's citizens deserve a final ruling on the merits as soon as possible.

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Chevron's Forum Shopping Over Ecuador Pollution Hits Dead End In Canada

It is widely known that Chevron has acted as a serial forum shopper when it comes to trying to evade its liability for creating an environmental disaster in Ecuador's Amazon. But Chevron's game of corporate subterfuge and litigation is clearly unraveling, spelling huge new risks for company shareholders.

In short, Chevron CEO John Watson's billion-dollar campaign to buy impunity for Chevron's human rights abuses in Ecuador is flaming out. Watson himself is at risk of being whipsawed by his own short-sightedness.

Canada's Supreme Court ruled in early September that thousands of Ecuadorian rainforest villagers have the legal right to try to seize company assets in that country to force it to pay for its court-mandated clean-up in Ecuador. This is serious: for the first time in two decades, the villagers have a direct path to a full recovery of their $9.5 billion judgment. (Chevron has an estimated $15 billion of assets in Canada, including a refinery, offshore oil field, and office buildings.)

Ecuador's Supreme Court already ruled in 2013 that Chevron must pay up. True to form, Watson had sold off company assets in Ecuador as the evidence proving the company's pollution poured in to court. Watson's posture of evasion not only has infuriated Chevron shareholders and alienated environmental and human rights groups, but has forced the impoverished villagers to chase down company assets around the world in a cynical game of corporate hide and seek.

In finding that the villagers had jurisdiction over Chevron, Canada's Supreme Court dealt a severe blow to Watson's strategy. In a unanimous decision, the court said this in reference to Chevron and other debtors who try to evade paying foreign court judgments:

Through their own behaviour and legal non-compliance, they have made themselves the subject of outstanding obligations, so they must be called upon to answer for their debts in various jurisdictions... The need to acknowledge and show respect for the legal action of other states has consistently remained one of comity's core components, and militates in favor of recognition and enforcement.

Murray Klippenstein, a Canadian lawyer who represented several human rights groups in the country who submitted a brief in support of the villagers, praised the decision in a legal publication. He said,

Chevron some time ago declared a total war, scorched earth legal strategy against this claim by the Ecuadorian villagers, and in this proceeding in Canada, Chevron was seeking to import into the law of international reciprocal enforcement of judgments an entirely novel test... in its decision the Supreme Court methodically and meticulously analyzed, and rejected, that attempt, based on existing legal principles -- and rightly so.

While Chevron forum shops, thousands of vulnerable people in Ecuador suffer from cancer and other grievous health impacts such as spontaneous miscarriages due to the company's failure to remediate its contamination. Thousands have either perished or face a real risk of death in the coming years. (For background on Chevron's cancer problem in Ecuador as documented by several independent scientific studies, see here.)

Chevron's forum shopping has been well-documented.

Chevron blocked the original case from being heard in U.S. courts (where it was filed in 1993) and insisted the litigation take place in Ecuador. It filed 14 sworn affidavits praising the fairness of Ecuador's courts.

Once in Ecuador, Chevron sold off its assets in the country and tried to get the matter dismissed on jurisdictional grounds even though it had promised U.S. courts it would accept jurisdiction there. When that didn't work, it started to attack the very courts it had previously praised.

At one point, notorious Chevron lawyer Ricardo Reis Veiga corruptly "persuaded" the country's Attorney General to call the trial judge to insist that the case be tossed. (The judge refused the entirely inappropriate request; Reis Veiga still works for Chevron.)

After years of trying to sabotage the proceedings in Ecuador -- Chevron's lawyers threatened judges with jail time and filed thousands of frivolous motions -- the courts ruled against the company based on more than 100 technical evidentiary reports and the company's own internal environmental audits. Despite its earlier promises, Chevron refused to pay and said it would fight the matter "until hell freezes over and then fight it out on the ice."

In Canada, Chevron tried to block the enforcement action by claiming its assets are held by a wholly-owned subsidiary. In Argentina, where another enforcement action was filed, Watson flew to Buenos Aries and met with the country's President. He then invested in a new gas field in exchange for a technical dismissal of the enforcement action.

Back in the United States, Chevron convinced a rogue federal trial judge in Manhattan to issue an unprecedented and illegal order purporting to block the villagers from attempting to enforce their judgment anywhere in the world. The judge, who had undisclosed investments in Chevron when he ruled, was reversed unanimously on appeal. He was also mocked by international law scholars around the world.

Chevron will face major hurdles in Canada if it tries to allege it was the victim of "fraud" by the very people it poisoned in Ecuador. Its evidence in this regard was rejected unanimously by Ecuador's Supreme Court and has been debunked even more since in other legal proceedings. The real fraud is how Chevron uses its fake allegation to retaliate against those who held it accountable.

It turns out that much of Chevron's "evidence" comes from a completely discredited witness paid $2 million by the company in violation of federal law.  Further, new whistleblower videos prove Chevron technicians tried to hide evidence of oil contamination at its former well sites in Ecuador as part of an elaborate scheme to defraud the courts during the trial there. (For more evidence of Chevron's vast corruption in Ecuador, see this affidavit.)

Chevron's two decades of litigation trickery, executed by no fewer than 60 different law firms paid enormous sums by the company, has forestalled justice in Ecuador for far too long. Something tells us the respected courts of Canada understand this point very well.

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Chevron Paying Notre Dame "Human Rights" Professor Cassel To Publicly Attack Ecuadorian Villagers

If you want a new example of corruption in legal academia, look no further than Chevron's relationship with Notre Dame "human rights" law professor Douglas Cassel. Chevron is paying Cassel to attack the rainforest villagers and lawyers who have held Chevron accountable in Ecuador for its environmental disaster in one of the great recent successes of the corporate accountability and human rights movements.

As far as we can tell, Cassel never even spoke or wrote about this historic human rights case until Chevron started to pay him in 2012. He now tries to downplay his financial relationship with Chevron when writing blogs that largely regurgitate the company's talking points and are rife with factual distortions and other shortcomings, as this critique to his "Open Letter" points out in detail.

Cassel is being used by Chevron to help it evade paying the $10 billion judgment it owes to the people of Ecuador for dumping toxic waste into the rainforest when it operated in the South American nation between 1964 and 1992.

It is pretty clear that Cassel also is allowing himself to play a central role in a classic oil industry subterfuge. Since the corporation (Chevron) that dumped billions of gallons of oil waste into the rainforest no longer has credibility, it tries to enlist a third party academic to launder its agitprop. It is another example of how Chevron tries to use money to corrupt institutions, whether they be courts or universities as we describe in more detail below.

During the litigation, Chevron was so desperate to avoid losing that it paid $2 million to a discredited witness to present false testimony about a supposed bribe that was later disproven by computer forensic analysis. It also threatened judges in Ecuador with jail time if they did not rule in its favor. Chevron lawyers filed thousands of frivolous motions to delay and sabotage the judicial process. (For more on Chevron's unethical payments of thousands of dollars in cash to key witness Alberto Guerra, see here and here. For a general account of the company's corruption in Ecuador, see this sworn affidavit.)

Chevron has tried to enlist other academics in its cash-for-support propaganda plan. Most have resisted the entreaties, but the results are poor for those who signed on. When in 2008 Chevron tried to use Dr. Douglas Southgate to defend its toxic dumping in Ecuador, it turned out he was affiliated with an institute funded by the oil and gas industry designed to cast doubt on global warning. See here for background.

Chevron also tried to use Dr. Ralph Marquez to "monitor" the science in the Ecuador case during visits by court experts to the company's highly contaminated well sites. Once Marquez was exposed as a former chief lobbyist for the chemical industry in the state of Texas (and a confidant of Karl Rove), he disappeared from the case. (See here for background.)

Chevron's lineage with low-grade "academics" reflects poorly on both Cassel's personal ethics and those of Notre Dame's reputable law school. Notre Dame should not be letting Cassel trade on its credibility to sell his own soul (and by extension the university's) to a corporate human rights abuser -- particularly when there is no real transparency about the amount of money changing hands and the conditions placed by the company on any "research" for publication.

While Cassel reaps cash for the arrangement, Notre Dame must pay a high cost via its harmed reputation and compromised academic integrity. The New York Times just exposed the same type of academic corruption at various universities -- including the University of Florida -- where Monsanto and other companies are battling to stop the labeling of genetically-modified foods by quietly paying academics to advocate their positions without full transparency.

Most universities now require their faculty to be completely transparent about any financial relationships they might have with third parties. Notre Dame needs to get on board. Cassel's failure to be transparent about his financial ties to Chevron creates a conflict of interest given his responsibilities to teach Notre Dame's students consistent with the high standards of scholarship and professional objectivity demanded by a top-flight university.

Does Cassel tell his students that he is taking money from Chevron, a company that multiple courts have found to have committed environmental human rights abuses in Ecuador on a grand scale? When he teaches the case, does he provide the financial details of his conflict of interest? Does he disclose his contract so students can assess if Chevron has editorial control (or influence) over what he publishes as a so-called "academic"? Is anyone at Notre Dame asking these questions?

Cassel's spectacle is made worse by the fact Notre Dame expressly states that its mission is to help combat poverty, oppression, and injustice -- the very life conditions forced on thousands of indigenous persons and farmers in Ecuador by the irresponsible operating practices of Cassel's client. (For background on the overwhelming evidence against Chevron in the case, see here. For the high rates of cancer in the rainforest where Chevron operated, see here. For a legal brief responding in detail to Chevron's allegations of fraud, see here.)

Last week, after Canada's Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Ecuadorian villagers could try to seize Chevron's assets in that country to pay for their clean-up, Cassel predictably posted a blog trying to minimize the importance of the decision. In fact, the decision is highly significant and was reported in all major media (see here for our take on the significance) for good reason. Which interpretation of the decision does Cassel plan to teach in the classroom -- his "own" version consistent with Chevron's talking points, or the perspective of the Canadian justices and villagers?

It is worth nothing that Cassel is isolated in his pro-Chevron view of the case. At least 35 prominent international law scholars from nine countries have filed a legal brief supporting the villagers as have numerous U.S. environmental and human rights groups. As far as we can tell, Cassel is virtually alone in legal academia as a wholesale backer of Chevron defenses that already have been rejected by multiple courts, including Ecuador's top court. We doubt he would take such a position if he were not being paid.

Notre Dame appears to have a strong "conflict of interest" policy that prohibits any "situation where financial or other personal or professional considerations compromise an individual’s objectivity, professional judgment, professional integrity, and/or ability to perform his or her professional responsibilities to the University." On its website, the law school says a Notre Dame lawyer should embody "exceptional moral and ethical standards" and "compassion" for others.

These standards might be a good starting point for Notre Dame faculty to use when assessing Cassel's behavior.

To be clear, we don't mind taking on Cassel's pro-Chevron arguments and we do not dispute his right to be heard. What we do mind is his lack of ethics and fundamental dishonesty in trying to downplay -- and often hide -- his relationship with Chevron as a way to try to enhance his own credibility.

We are waiting for Cassel to disclose any and all of his written agreements with Chevron. It would be interesting to know how much he charges to compromise his personal ethics, the ideals of the human rights movement, and the academic integrity of a university.

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Six Reasons Why Chevron's Ecuador Disaster Just Became A Company Nightmare In Canada

Chevron's Ecuador environmental disaster -- called "The Amazon Chernobyl" by its indigenous and farmer victims in the rainforest -- has now spread to Canada in what is fast becoming a business and legal nightmare for company management.

For Chevron CEO John Watson, the news that the company will face a trial in the respected courts of Canada over its toxic dumping in Ecuador could hardly have come at a worse time. Due to the drop in oil prices and other structural problems in the company, Chevron has lost a whopping $100 billion in market value just in the last 12 months. (See here for background.)

Now, Watson must face the frightening fact that seven justices on Canada's respected Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that Ecuadorian villagers can try to seize $10 billion of Chevron assets in the country to pay for their environmental clean-up as mandated by the very courts in Ecuador where Chevron insisted the trial be held. While legal hurdles remain -- the case now goes back to a trial court in Toronto -- the villagers plan to use any funds collected to remediate what experts believe is the worst man-made oil disaster on the planet.

This is a huge and much-needed legal victory for the affected indigenous and farmer communities and for human rights victims worldwide. It is also the latest in a series of stinging courtroom defeats in the case for Chevron under Watson's leadership.

This is the second time that a respected Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against Chevron's attempts to block the Ecuador judgment. Ecuador's National Court of Justice, in a 5-0 decision in 2013, affirmed the oil company's liability for the deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest when it operated hundreds of wells (under the Texaco brand) from 1964 to 1990. That dumping caused a massive outbreak of cancer affecting tens of thousands of people.

There are now four separate appellate courts -- two in Canada and two in Ecuador -- issuing unanimous rulings against Chevron on important aspects of the case. (Intermediate appellate courts in the respective countries each issued separate 3-0 decisions against Chevron.) In Canada, the villagers have gone 10-0 against the oil company before appellate judges; in Ecuador, they have gone 8-0.

The latest decision is not Chevron's only bad news. Just recently, in a related investor arbitration between Chevron and Ecuador's government, the oil company suffered a devastating setback when the three international arbitrators tossed out its main legal defense. (For more, read this.)

The latest Canada ruling is a powerful example of how Chevron's vicious attacks against the very indigenous tribes it poisoned  -- in a strategy orchestrated by Watson and former Bush Administration official and Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate -- continue to backfire. It seems that the more the money the company spends to fend off the Ecuadorians, the more it ends up chasing its own tail.

Here are six main reasons why Watson and Pate -- despite having spent an estimated $2 billion of shareholder funds to pay 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers to carry out the company's scorched-earth strategy -- are facing a growing nightmare north of the border:

**Canada has a judicial system respected throughout the world. When Chevron loses in Canada, it cannot attack the credibility of the country's courts as it has unfairly done for years in Ecuador. Nor can it strip its assets from the country, as it sneakily did in Ecuador. Chevron's litigation strategy of gamesmanship and intimidation simply won't work in Canada.

**Chevron will be forced to face its environmental crimes in public. Watson and Pate likely will have to deal with the merits of Chevron's horrific environmental pollution and the cancer fallout before company shareholders and a global audience -- something they and their predecessors have been trying to avoid for two decades.

**Chevron has a critically important pool of assets in Canada. Estimated to be worth $15 billion, these assets can pay for the entirety of the Ecuador judgment. That's a huge business problem for Chevron as Canada is one of the leading energy producers in the world and the source of an estimated $3 billion in annual profits for the company.

**For the villagers, the cost of litigation just got way lower. Given that the entire Ecuador judgment can be recovered in one country, for the villagers the case just became much more viable. Also helping is that any issues that might be raised already have been litigated. Chevron's massive resource advantage is no more.

**Because of interest payments, Chevron's liability is growing. Canada allows interest to run on uncollected judgments. This will severely tax Chevron if it tries to employ its usual strategy of obstructionism. The villagers estimate accrued interest in Canada on the judgment already has cost Chevron an additional $500 million, increasing its Ecuador liability to $10 billion.

**One of the  top trial lawyers in Canada represents the villagers. The highly respected Alan Lenczner has been litigating for 40 years and has argued roughly 20 cases before the Canada Supreme Court. (A leading Canadian newspaper just published this fascinating profile of Mr. Lenczner's extraordinary career.)

Other than Chevron, the big loser from the Canada decision seems to be increasingly isolated New York trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Kaplan, who maintains highly questionable personal investments in Chevron and let the company block any airing of the environmental evidence, is Watson's favorite activist jurist. While literally dozens of trial and appellate judges in three countries have now rejected some or all of Chevron's defense claims, Kaplan is the only judge in the world who has embraced Chevron's discredited "fraud" narrative.

The larger point: if Watson thinks Kaplan will be able to bail him out in Canada (or anywhere else for that matter), he should think again. Kaplan's preposterous and arrogant opinions condemning the entire Ecuadorian judiciary based on the testimony of a single political pundit will backfire against Chevron before any fair tribunal and are likely to be reversed on appeal. (For details on Kaplan's personal conflict and his open hostility toward the villagers, read this legal petition, this analysis, this appellate brief and this article.)

Watson and Pate have other problems. A new computer forensic analysis has destroyed their manufactured allegation that the Ecuadorian judgment was the product of bribery. The forensic analysis demonstrated that Chevron's star witness, the discredited Alberto Guerra, has been lying under oath (after being coached by Chevron lawyers for an astonishing 53 days) about the supposed bribe. Chevron had greased Guerra and his family with roughly $2 million, including a Mafioso-style $38,000 in bills out of a suitcase, for his "cooperation" (i.e., false testimony) in violation of the ethical rules and possibly federal law. For more of the disturbing details, read here.

The options for Chevron are narrowing as shareholders grow ever more furious at the mishandling of the litigation and the unsavory tactics being used. Watson and Pate also has been criticized for using the notorious "transnational practice group" at the controversial law firm Gibson Dunn to help Chevron undermine the rule of law by falsifying scientific evidence, coaching the corrupt Guerra to lie, filing motions to harass its critics, and trying to intimidate judges in Ecuador with the threat of jail time. (See below for details.)

New evidence also emerged recently that Chevron tried to defraud Ecuador's courts by ordering its scientists to engage in an elaborate scheme to hide toxic contamination during the underlying trial, as these whistleblower videos demonstrate.

With Chevron's defenses fraying and the bad news coming in torrents, the more intelligent approach for Watson and Pate would be to respect the Supreme Court ruling in Ecuador and work with rainforest community leaders and their lawyers to solve the pollution problem. Instead, in an era of industry uncertainty produced by low oil prices, Pate and Watson squander precious resources in an all-out litigation war that increases the company's business risk and does nothing to save the many lives that are being lost on Chevron's watch in the forest.

In the end, these two and others associated with Chevron could very well face personal exposure over the Ecuador liability given the unethical, dubious, and potentially illegal tactics being used.

As the enforcement action in Canada proceeds and interest on the judgment runs, we suspect neither Canada's judiciary nor the financial markets will be impressed with Chevron's approach.

(For a summary of some of the gross misconduct from Chevron and Gibson Dunn, see this sworn affidavit from Ecuadorian lawyer Juan Pablo Saenz. Some of the Gibson Dunn lawyers involved in the conspiracy to present false testimony via Guerra include Randy Mastro, Avi Weitzman, Reed Brodsky, William Thomson and Andrea Neumann. In another incident, the High Court of London recently sanctioned a Gibson Dunn lawyer for presenting false witness testimony to try to frame a political enemy of one of the firm's clients, the African government of Djibouti. In the Ecuador case, the firm has been sanctioned by a U.S. federal judge and criticized for using discovery motions to harass Chevron's critics and present false testimony about the case to the U.S. Congress.)

(For a summary of the evidence against Chevron in Ecuador, see here. For a summary of the cancer problem in Ecuador created on Chevron's watch, see here. For photos of the people in Ecuador Chevron says don't matter, see this essay in The Huffington Post. For a 60 Minutes segment on Chevron's pollution in Ecuador, see here.)

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Chevron's Ecuador Strategy Backfires As Villagers Move to Seize $106m From Company

If you want a vivid example of how Chevron CEO John Watson and General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate continue to step on themselves in Ecuador, look no further than the company's recent arbitration "victory" against the government of Ecuador in a case involving a dispute over oil royalties.

This supposed Chevron "victory" -- in the amount of a $106 million award -- is likely to help Ecuadorian indigenous villagers collect their separate $9.5 billion environmental judgment against the oil giant. It could also disrupt Chevron's operations in other countries where the villagers are trying to seize company assets to force compliance with the environmental judgment.

The villagers won the larger judgment in 2011 in a civil case in Ecuador after Chevron insisted the trial be held in the South American nation. Chevron's attempts to sabotage and corrupt Ecuador's court system throughout that trial have been well-documented. Ultimately, Ecuador's Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in 2013 in a unanimous 222-page opinion that meticulously described -- mostly using Chevron's own evidence -- the company's wrongdoing at hundreds of well sites throughout the Amazon.

(For examples of Chevron's attempts to corrupt the Ecuador proceedings, see this affidavit and how the company falsified evidence by paying a corrupt witness.)

Chevron launched the arbitration case against Ecuador's government in the middle of the environmental trial to gain leverage. It tried to claim its "damages" over the distribution of oil royalties dating from the 1980s were a whopping $700 million. (Chevron and Ecuador's state-owned oil company had been partners in a consortium at the time.)

Chevron's goal was to use the risk of a large judgment over the royalties to pressure Ecuador's government to kill off the environmental case, where the company faced an enormous multi-billion dollar liability. Chevron's plan was an illegal attack on the rule of law and a blatant attempt at extortion. Ecuador's government did not buckle, further infuriating the company.

In the meantime, because Chevron refused to abide by the environmental judgment, the villagers in 2012 quietly secured a court order in Ecuador entitling them to seize company assets to help pay for the remediation of their ancestral lands. Chevron had no real assets in Ecuador at the time, having sold off its Texaco gas stations in 2007 in anticipation of losing the case.

Here's where the law of unintended consequences kicks in. Watson and Pate's arbitration victory over the issue of royalties created Chevron's only real asset in Ecuador. That asset is a debt owed Chevron by the government of Ecuador. But Ecuador's courts -- the very courts where Chevron accepted jurisdiction and wanted the trial held -- have told the government that the asset is now the property of the villagers and cannot be paid to Chevron.

The villagers no doubt plan to use some of the recovered funds to help seize Chevron assets in other jurisdictions such as Canada and Brazil, where collection actions are pending.

The clean-up in Ecuador clearly will require far more resources than the amount of the arbitral award. Chevron abandoned roughly 1,000 toxic waste pits that continue to contaminate soils, streams and groundwater. Each of those sites is akin to a Superfund site in the United States. And by way of comparison, BP has already paid out $54 billion to repair damage and to compensate victims after the much smaller Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010.

The 1,000 or so waste pits are not the only problem. Chevron also discharged billions of gallons of benzene-laden formation waters into streams and rivers relied on by locals for their drinking water. Cancer rates in the area have skyrocketed and untold numbers of people have perished, as this photo essay by journalist Lou Demettais documents.

(For a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron in Ecuador, see here. For a 60 Minutes segment documenting the company's deliberate dumping of oil waste, see here.)

Pablo Fajardo, who represents the villagers, said that any funds collected from the arbitral award will be placed in a trust account set up to administer the clean-up. Actually getting the funds into the account will require a line item in Ecuador's budget. It is unclear how that might play out given Chevron's many prior attempts to disrupt the case in Ecuador, but we are hopeful.

Fajardo was clear about his intentions, saying in a press release:

The Ecuadorian victims of Chevron's toxic dumping have a lawful right to obtain this arbitral award and other company assets until their judgment is fully satisfied. Our people are suffering from a humanitarian crisis and many lives are at stake because Chevron -- unlike BP in the United States -- refused to pay for a clean up of its pollution.

We might add that the Ecuador court order is not the only bad news lately for Chevron.

Chevron's central defense in the Ecuador matter -- that the trial court judgment was "ghostwritten" -- has been unraveling for several months, as this article in The Huffington Post explains. And Chevron's retaliatory "racketeering" case also faces a major risk of reversal, as this brief and this article by American lawyer Steven Donziger and his representatives explain.

Also hurting Watson is the stunning disclosure of internal Chevron whistleblower videos that show company field technicians trying to hide evidence of contamination from Ecuador's courts. These videos were published by VICE News and Amazon Watch and can be seen here and here.

The bottom line is that Chevron is suddenly at risk of becoming the leading financier for its adversaries in Ecuador. Some might call that the very definition of poetic justice.

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Chevron's Greed and Racism Highlighted by BP's $18 Billion Settlement

BP's latest settlement for its Gulf of Mexico spill, for the amount of $18.7 billion, further highlights the greed and racism of Chevron for refusing to settle claims over the far worse ecological damage caused by the company to the people of Ecuador's Amazon region.

With the latest settlement, BP estimates its total liability for the 2010 spill to be $54 billion. That's more than five times higher than Chevron's liability for systematically discharging billions of gallons of benzene-lade oil waste into the waterways of Ecuador's Amazon. The dumping happened from 1964 to 1992, when Chevron (operating as Texaco) abruptly pulled out of the country.

Could there be a more brazen illustration of racism and greed than Chevron's despicable refusal to accept responsibility for what it did in Ecuador?

Chevron CEO John Watson has claimed Ecuador's courts gouged the company when they delivered the verdict against the oil giant in 2011. The damages later were upheld in 2013 in a unanimous decision by Ecuador's Supreme Court. To avoid a U.S. jury, Chevron had insisted the trial be held in Ecuador and had accepted jurisdiction there.

While BP compensates its victims in the U.S., Chevron thus far has been able to obtain effective impunity for its crimes against the people of Ecuador. Cancer rates in the affected area have skyrocketed, costing numerous lives. Instead of cleaning up, the company attacks the very villagers it poisoned and sues the lawyers who have led the legal charge demanding adequate compensation.

Chevron's contamination in Ecuador is far more widespread than BP's in the Gulf. It has lasted longer, was planned deliberately, and has decimated indigenous groups. The hard truth is that environmental racism is alive and well in Chevron today and Ecuador is not the only example.

Another is how the company treats the Bay Area community of Richmond. That's where Chevron owns a polluting refinery where a fire recently forced thousands to seek medical attention. When the community stood up to Chevron and demanded changes, the company had the temerity to spend $3 million to fund its own candidates for the town council.

There was a tragic loss of life and a major environmental impact from the Gulf spill. But at least 1,400 people in Ecuador are estimated to have died from cancer and other oil-related diseases. The death toll will rise if there is no clean-up.

Chevron's racism toward the people of Ecuador was on clear display during the trial. Company lawyers proposed that Ecuador's courts adopt a clean-up standard 100 times more lax than that used in its home state of California. For more on how Chevron tried to corrupt the court process in Ecuador, see this sworn affidavit from lawyer Juan Pablo Saenz.

Of course, many of Chevron's victims in Ecuador are indigenous and live in an isolated part of a Third World country. Unlike BP's victims in the U.S., they do not have environmental laws like the Clean Water Act to protect them.

Let's review the facts.

In Ecuador, a major U.S. oil company has refused for almost 50 years to clean up an environmental catastrophe caused by intentional dumping over a period of decades. In the U.S., a British company that had a terrible accident put up $20 billion without as much as a trial and ultimately settled the entire matter for more than $50 billion.

When Chevron CEO Watson claims the Ecuador judgment is too high, what he is really saying is it is unfathomable to him that people in the forest could actually hold his company accountable.

Watson and Donald Trump might have more in common than they realize.

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In Blow to Chevron, Judges Rule that Ecuador Pollution Dispute Belongs In The Courts of Ecuador

A five-judge panel from a respected New York appeals court has dealt a blow to Chevron in a dispute between two groups of villagers related to the company's $9.5 billion pollution liability in Ecuador.

In a decision issued this week, the court unanimously ruled that any dispute among Ecuadorian villagers over the distribution of proceeds from the historic judgement should be heard in the same courts that issued it. American law professor Judith Kimerling, who claims to represent a handful of indigenous families out of an estimated 30,000 affected Ecuadorian villagers, had asked the New York trial court to issue an order that her clients were entitled to a proportional share of the proceeds.

Kimerling's theory was sound but her choice of forum was nuts from the get go. Although she purports to be a human rights lawyer, in reality she was doing the bidding of Chevron by attacking Ecuador's courts as incapable of dealing with the dispute. She could not point to a single instance in the history of American jurisprudence where a U.S. court tried to resolve competing claims among foreign citizens over the proceeds of a foreign judgment issued in the courts of their own country.

The latest appellate court decision, issued unanimously, is a direct rebuke to Chevron and raises yet more questions about the wrongheaded approach of U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan in a similar case brought by the oil giant.

At Chevron's request, Kaplan in 2014 refused to seat a jury and then entered a bizarre and unprecedented order that tries to block the Ecuadorians from collecting the proceeds of their judgment anywhere in the world. Kaplan refused to even review the 105 technical evidentiary reports that demonstrated Chevron had deliberately disposed of its toxic waste in the rainforest, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak of cancer that has cost the lives of numerous local residents.

Dozens of international law scholars filed a "friend of the court" brief blasting Kaplan's decision as a violation of international law. The Kaplan ruling is under appeal before a separate federal panel.

In the meantime, just a few blocks away, five judges from a New York state appeals court used logic and common sense sorely lacking in Kaplan's courtroom. The court agreed with Steven R. Donziger, a New York attorney who has represented the affected communities in Ecuador for two decades. Donziger had argued that any dispute over the judgment obviously should be resolved in the nation that conducted the trial.

According to the state appellate court,

"Ecuador is the forum more convenient to the parties and witnesses in New York; there is no unfairness in requiring plaintiffs to prosecute their claims in Ecuador where they reside; the underlying litigation took place there; the underlying judgment to which plaintiffs claim a proportional share, was issued there; and defendant Amazon Defense Coalition, which was directed to distribute the proceeds of the judgment, is domiciled there."

Donziger, in his own statement, praised the court's logic and implicitly criticized Kaplan:

"The New York state appellate court properly recognized that issues related to an Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron should be resolved by the courts of Ecuador, not by U.S. trial judges who not only lack jurisdiction but have no expertise regarding Ecuadorian law or procedure."

One must remember that Ecuador's courts spent 11 years in trial and appellate proceedings only because Chevron insisted the trial be held there after the original action was filed in New York in 1993. Once damning evidence of extensive contamination was presented in Chevron's preferred courts of Ecuador, the oil company shifted gears and began to attack the very judicial system it had previously praised.

In the meantime, Chevron came back to the same U.S. court where it had blocked the original case to beg Judge Kaplan to try to rescue it from the Ecuadorian judgment. Kaplan -- who has undisclosed investments in Chevron -- was more than happy to oblige. He allowed the oil giant to present fabricated witness testimony and otherwise make a mockery of justice in his courtroom, as this document explains. (For Donziger's explanation of the case, see this article from The Huffington Post and this legal brief appealing Judge Kaplan's decision.)

In the meantime, the affected villagers are not waiting around to hear from U.S. courts. They have hired counsel in Canada and Brazil where they are pursuing Chevron's assets to force the company to comply with the rule of law. Chevron has responded in its usual fashion to its latest spate of bad news -- by trying to cyberbully a respected journalist who exposed that its entire defense to the judgment is falling apart.

For Donziger's full statement on the recent court decision, see this press release. For the court's full decision, see here.

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The Nation Magazine Exposes Chevron's Lies About Its Toxic Dumping In Ecuador

More journalists are beginning to expose the lies behind Chevron's retaliation campaign against the indigenous and farmer communities who held it accountable in a court of law for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste in Ecuador's rainforest.

The communities own a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron, but the company refuses to pay even though it had accepted jurisdiction in Ecuador's courts and insisted the trial be held in the South American nation.

The latest to weigh in: James North of The Nation.

In a fascinating article called Ecuador's Battle for Environmental Justice In Ecuador, North describes a trip he took recently to the affected area of rainforest that Texaco claims it had remediated after operating there from 1964 to 1992. North describes a trip with Donald Moncayo, a local resident:

We set off into the rainforest.  Moncayo...started at Aguarico 2, a well that has been closed for years... The oily residue is still floating on the surface. Then he marched down a steep slope to a stream, where you could see and smell the oil as well.

Moncayo then took North to a well site called Lago 2 -- one that Texaco in 1998 specifically had certified as "remediated" to Ecuador's government in exchange for a bogus "release" that it still tries to argue absolves it of all legal responsibility. This is how North describes it:

Moncayo went to Pozo Lago 2, which is near the modest wood-frame house where he lives with his wife and baby daughter. He pulled out his core sampler and set to work. After only a meter and a half, he struck some viscosity; before two meters, he hit heavy oil soak... Less than 50 yards away, people were washing in a stream.

North also takes certain legal reporters to task for adopting Chevron's world view that it has been victimized by the very people in Ecuador that it poisoned. He writes:

On closer inspection, the truth is totally different. If the plaintiffs finally win in the end, the rain-forest inhabitants will not just have their habitat start to be cleansed of the oil muck that oozes into their water supply, or enjoy improved health facilities to treat what they argue are elevated levels of cancer and other diseases. They will also have proved the success of an innovative legal strategy that recruits financial help in the rich developed world to provide at least a fighting chance against a corporate colossus like Chevron, which has already spent, by some estimates, $2 billion it its massive legal and propaganda campaign.

Aside from from North, other journalists to expose Chevron's wrongdoing in Ecuador in recent years include Alexander Zaitchik of Rolling Stone, who summarized the company's unethical intimidation tactics;  William Langewiesche of Vanity Fair, who wrote a stirring profile of Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo; and the producers of 60 Minutes, whose award-winning segment Amazon Crude had Chevron spokesperson Sylvia Garrigo tying herself in knots by suggesting the oil on the ground in Ecuador was as harmless as the oil in the makeup on her face.

Most recently, Adam Klasfeld of Courthouse News -- himself a victim of Chevron's cyberbullying for his independent reporting -- exposed that the oil giant had donated a whopping $13 million to the U.S. State Department while inappropriately trying to lobby Hillary Clinton and other government officials over the Ecuador litigation. Klasfeld earlier reported on a new forensic analysis that suggests Chevron presented false evidence about the case to a U.S. federal judge.

The underlying environmental matter was heard in Ecuador at Chevron's insistence after the company praised the country's justice system. The litigation in Ecuador resulted in a Supreme Court decision in 2013 that requires the oil giant to remediate more than 1,000 toxic waste pits as well as rivers and streams where the company discharged an additional 15 billion gallons of oil waste. Locals call the disaster the "Amazon Chernobyl".

For background on the case and Chevron's retaliation campaign, see this summary of the evidence and this legal brief  from Steven Donziger, the longtime U.S. legal advisor to the Ecuadorian communities.

You can also learn from North's article why Chevron and its CEO John Watson so hate Ecuador President Rafael Correa, one of the most popular leaders in Latin America.

Correa has the temerity to call out Chevron for its malfeasence, much like President Obama did to BP in 2010 after its spill in the Gulf of Mexico. North quotes Correa accusing Chevron of "shamelessly lying" to evade paying for a clean-up in Ecuador. Correa also explains what already has been confirmed by three layers of courts: Chevron polluted deliberately to inflate its profits.

"They weren't interested in the human beings who lived in the Amazon region,"  Correa told North in an interview. "To me, it is question of racism."

Thank you, President Correa. We could not have said it better. And thanks to James North and The Nation for highlighting this latest sad chapter in American corporate wrongdoing.

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Judge Kaplan's Decision For Chevron Based on Falsified Evidence, Says New Report

Chevron is on the ropes yet again in the Ecuador pollution case as its main defense continues to unravel, according to prominent appellate lawyer Deepak Gupta of the Gupta Beck law firm in Washington, D.C.

An explosive new forensic report from Ecuador's government filed recently before a federal appellate court in New York proves that U.S. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan accepted false evidence from a paid witness to try to help Chevron evade paying its $9.5 billion pollution liability to rainforest villagers in the South American nation, according to Gupta. Gupta's letter brief on the issue can be read here.

Gupta has charged Chevron with presenting false testimony to try to frame his client, New York-based human rights lawyer Steven R. Donziger. Chevron's goal for years has been to evade paying the court judgment in its chosen forum of Ecuador, primarily by trying to demonize Donziger to distract attention from its own crimes and fraud. Donziger has been working on the case for 22 years.

Chevron executive Rodrigo Perez Pallares admitted during an eight-year trial in Ecuador that the company dumped at least 15 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into streams and rivers in Ecuador relied on by indigenous groups for their drinking water, bathing, and fishing. Multiple health evaluations have found skyrocketing cancer rates in the affected area. A half-hearted Chevron remediation turned out to be a sham; even Chevron's own technical reports proved during the trial that its former well sites were contaminated with life-threatening toxins. (For a summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron see, here.)

Donziger and one of his Ecuadorian colleagues, Goldman Prize winner Pablo Fajardo, have been the primary targets of a Chevron smear campaign that involves at least six public relations firms. One of those firms, CRC Public Relations, is notorious for having executed the Swift Boat campaign attacking John Kerry's patriotism in the 2004 presidential campaign.

In his latest filing, Gupta accused Judge Kaplan of accepting the false testimony from disgraced former Ecuadorian trial judge Alberto Guerra as part of Chevron's strategy to exact revenge against the lawyers who helped the villagers win their historic judgment. (For the specific details of Guerra's false testimony, see this legal brief.)

Gupta demonstrates in his latest brief that Chevron's main allegation -- that lawyers for the villagers "ghostwrote" the trial judgment -- is irrefutably false.

Gupta points out that after being found guilty in Ecuador, Chevron looked for a way to blow up the judgment against it. It suddenly found a man (Guerra) who had been defrocked as a judge in Ecuador for accepting bribes. At the time, he was making $500 monthly but was willing to accuse Donziger (whom he had met briefly on two occasions) and Fajardo of orchestrating the "ghostwriting" of the 188-page trial court judgment in exchange for a princely fee.

Guerra struck a deal with Chevron to be paid $2 million in cash and benefits. He then told a story that the document that became the trial court judgment in Ecuador was given to the trial judge (Nicolas Zambrano) on a flash drive just days before it was issued.

Donziger, who has never received an ethics complaint in 23 years of law practice and who had never even met or seen the trial judge who wrote the judgment, always claimed that testimony was a lie. But how do you prove a negative?

Enter the new forensic report that became available only after Kaplan made his horrendously flawed findings of ghostwriting.  Based on an examination of the hard drives of the office computer of the Ecuadorian trial judge, the report clearly demonstrates that the Word document that became the judgment was saved no fewer than 484 times on the computer of the trial judge in the four months before it was issued. So much for Guerra's flash drive story.

Gupta's brief explains how the new report, prepared by American computer expert J. Christopher Racich ("Racich report") for a related arbitration proceeding between Chevron and Ecuador's government, blows the lid off the oil major's defense.

Gupta nails Chevron for corrupting the court process:

"On this record, and even more so in light of the new forensic analysis not available to the district court, it is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Donziger was framed by Chevron on the basis of a paid witness who admitted to making false statements to sweeten his deal with Chevron."

For good measure, Gupta added that the Racich report proves "Guerra's story was a lie designed to net him a massive payout from Chevron." You would have to be obtuse not to figure that out even before the Racich report was disclosed.

But Kaplan, who called Donziger a "field general" and allowed Chevron to make a mockery of the rule of law in his courtroom, still credited Guerra's internally inconsistent and wholly unreliable testimony.

Chevron's exorbitant payments to Guerra were themselves an utterly indefensible act as federal law prohibits payments to fact witnesses. None other than distinguished Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has confirmed this in a sworn affidavit that Kaplan predictably ignored.

It gets worse. Before taking the stand, Chevron lawyers coached Guerra on what he would say for 53 consecutive days. Those engaged in this unprecedented witness "prep" for Chevron were Avi Weitzman, Andrea Neumann, Reed Brodsky and Randy Mastro. That group hails from a law firm (Gibson Dunn & Crutcher) that the High Court of England recently found falsified evidence in another case to try to frame a man who had become a threat to another of its high-profile clients.

Sound familiar?

Guerra has gotten rich off of Chevron. Among the other perks the oil giant provided for his testimony: immigration from Ecuador to the U.S. for several family members, health insurance, housing, a car, and a team of lawyers to help him secure political asylum. He lives in a secret location in the U.S. under Chevron's protection.

Donziger repeatedly has called Chevron's allegations a frame-up and criticized Judge Kaplan for making disparaging comments from the bench. (Kaplan referred to the affected communities as the "so-called" plaintiffs "said to reside" in the rainforest.) Donziger also exposed that Kaplan held undisclosed investments in Chevron during the trial, further un-endearing himself to a judge widely known for his bullying tendencies.

(For more detail on Kaplan's bias against Donziger and his clients, see this petition to remove him from the case.)

Donziger and a team of Ecuadorian lawyers secured the judgment against Chevron after eight years of hard-fought litigation where the oil giant repeatedly tied to corrupt and paralyze the proceedings. At one point, Chevron threatened the judge with jail time if he refused to grant a company motion to nullify the proceedings. At another point, the company filed 39 duplicative motions in 50 minutes to throw sand into the gears of the court. For part of the background on the company's corruption, see this affidavit from Ecuadorian lawyer Juan Pablo Saenz.

As if 105 technical evidentiary reports proving contamination was not enough evidence, just recently a Chevron whistleblower turned over internal company videos showing the oil giant's scientists laughing at the pollution at well sites in Ecuador that the company claimed to have remediated.

The judgment against Chevron was affirmed by two separate appellate courts in Ecuador, including by the country's Supreme Court in a unanimous 5-0 decision. The judgment was based almost completely on scientific evidence Chevron itself put before the court. The damages are relatively modest compared to the $30 billion paid out by BP for the far smaller Gulf of Mexico spill.

Even though Chevron insisted the the trial be held in Ecuador, as the evidence mounted the company quickly became a sore loser and announced it would never pay the judgment. In 2011, it sued Donziger and Fajardo in New York for roughly $60 billion -- thought to be the largest potential personal liability in U.S. history. Yet Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate had so little confidence in his own evidence that he dropped the entire damages claim on the eve of trial to avoid a jury of impartial fact finders.

Chevron's 32-year-old forensic expert Spencer Lynch -- who also examined the trial judge's hard drives -- had no answer for the Racich report. He has tried to claim flash drives were used in the judge's computer 56 times during the four-month period the judgment was written. But Racich showed that not a single one of those flash drives contained the judgment or any related documents. Most contained personal items such as family photos.

We might add that CEO John Watson had no answer to the Racich report either when confronted about it by Ecuadorian indigenous leader Humberto Piaguaje at the company's annual meeting last week.  See here for how Watson continues to mislead his own shareholders about the Ecuador case.

The question now is whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit can absorb this disturbing evidence and reverse a case where a federal judge so clearly relied on false evidence for his factual findings.

(For Donziger's view of the case, see this article in The Huffington Post and this article published on the legal website Law360.)

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