Steven Donziger of course disagrees with a Mar. 4 court decision in a case related to long-running environmental litigation involving Ecuador and Chevron Corp. The $9.5 billion judgment he won against Chevron in the Lago Agrio case in Ecuador is, according to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, fraudulent.
Donziger says he's confident he'll prevail on appeal.
But Judge Lewis Kaplan writes, "The wrongful actions of Donziger and his Ecuadorian legal team would be offensive to the laws of any nation that aspires to the rule of law, including Ecuador—and they knew it."
The 500-page opinion affirms suspicion that the case against Chevron for environmental damage caused by others is a money-grubbing sham.
Donziger, the opinion notes, spent millions of dollars on public relations campaigns aiming to pressure Chevron into negotiating a fat settlement. But Chevron fought back, in part by suing in New York.
Donziger might have begun with good intentions, the court says. "In the end, however, he and the Ecuadorian lawyers he led corrupted the Lago Agrio case.
"They submitted fraudulent evidence. They coerced one judge, first to use a court-appointed, supposedly impartial, 'global expert' to make an overall damages assessment and then to appoint to that important role a man whom Donziger hand-picked and paid to 'totally play ball' with the [Lago Agrio plaintiffs]. They then paid a Colorado consulting firm secretly to write all or most of the global expert's report, falsely presented the report as the work of the court-appointed and supposedly impartial expert, and told half-truths or worse to US courts in attempts to prevent exposure of that and other wrongdoing.
"Ultimately, the LAP team wrote the Lago Agrio court's judgment themselves and promised $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favor and sign their judgment.
"If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it."
Now, about that appeal….
