Open Letter Demanding an End to Unprecedented House Arrest Of
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Response to Doug Cassel's Apology for Chevron's Human Rights Violations in Ecuador*
Response to Doug Cassel's Apology for Chevron's Human Rights Violations In Ecuador* Notre Dame law professor Doug Cassel has sold his credibility as a human rights advocate to Chevron, a company that in Ecuador and elsewhere has proven itself to have committed significant human rights abuses against vulnerable peoples.1 In an argument based heavily on Chevron’s own misrepresentations, Cassel asserts in an “Open Letter” to the human rights community that a court finding in Ecuador that Chevron's toxic dumping decimated indigenous groups and wrecked the delicate Amazon ecosystem is illegitimate. We believe that Cassel's facts are inaccurate or stripped from context, his scholarship is rife with shortcomings, and his conclusions are deeply flawed. What is indisputable is that Cassel remained silent for the entire 18 years of this landmark battle for human rights justice until Chevron recently retained him.2 This is a sad spectacle indeed for a man who has dedicated much of his career to the field of human rights law. Cassel cites supposed "defects" in the Ecuador trial process—defects which take place regularly in trials the world over—to condemn not only the entire eight-year proceeding that resulted in the judgment against Chevron, but also the entire judicial system of a U.S. ally with an independent judiciary where Chevron itself has won multiple cases in recent years.3 Cassel also engages in false and defamatory * This document was prepared by members of the legal team that represents the Lago Agrio plaintiffs. Chevron operated under the “Texaco” brand in Ecuador from 1964-1992. -
United States District Court Southern District of New York
Case 1:19-cr-00561-LAP Document 328 Filed 06/09/21 Page 1 of 26 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK UNITED STATES, Plaintiff, 11 Cr. 0691 (LAP) v. STEVEN DONZIGER, Defendant. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS AND OFFER OF PROOF Martin Garbus, Esq. OFFIT | KURMAN 590 Madison Ave., 6th Floor New York, NY 10022 Tel. 347.589.8513 Fax. 212.545.1656 [email protected] Counsel for defendant Case 1:19-cr-00561-LAP Document 328 Filed 06/09/21 Page 2 of 26 INTRODUCTION This case is extraordinary. For the first time in the history of the United States, a private law firm with substantial ties to the oil and gas industry has been granted the powers of the United States to prosecute an adverse party and human rights attorney. To make matters worse, Mr. Donziger has been denied a jury of his peers and the presiding judge (the Hon. Loretta Preska) was handpicked by the aggrieved party (the Hon. Lewis Kaplan) to preside over the case.1 Even more disturbing is that this appears to be the nation's first corporate prosecution given that the oil company (Chevron) against whom Mr. Donziger won a large pollution judgement in Ecuador is a client of the very law firm (Seward & Kissel) now prosecuting him after the charges were declined by the U.S. attorney. In short, this case has all the trappings of a deeply troubled and conflicted prosecution run by an oil company. As a threshold issue, this case has been riddled with such structural decay as to warrant immediate dismissal on all charges. -
Donziger's Counterclaims
Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK Document 567-1 Filed 08/15/12 Page 94 of 152 COUNTERCLAIMS Defendants and Counter-Claimants Steven Donziger, The Law Offices of Steven R. Donziger, and Donziger & Associates, PLLC (collectively, “Donziger”) for their Counterclaims against Plaintiff and Counter-Claim Defendant Chevron Corporation (“Chevron”) allege as follows: I. INTRODUCTION 1. By no later than 2009, Chevron recognized that it was on the verge of losing one of the largest oil-related contamination lawsuits ever to go to trial, Maria Aguinda y Otros v. Chevron Corporation (the “Lago Agrio Litigation”), which had been wending its way through the United States and then the Ecuadorian court systems for 16 years. Chevron’s own documents, internal environmental audits, and expert analyses confirmed the toxic legacy its predecessor, Texaco, Inc. (“Texaco”), intentionally and knowingly had left behind in the Oriente region of Ecuador. And Chevron was running out of maneuvers to dodge entirely or delay a final adjudication of the claims against it on the merits. 2. Texaco—and, later, a merged entity referring to itself as “ChevronTexaco” — repeatedly had demanded that the trial not be heard in United States federal court in New York, the plaintiffs’ preferred forum, but rather in Ecuador, a forum which Chevron successfully argued to the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was “fair” and “totally adequate” and capable of handling a complex lawsuit against a foreign corporation such as Chevron. In so doing, Chevron did not believe that the 30,000 indigenous peoples and others impacted by Texaco’s misconduct (the “Afectados”)—who grew up drinking from the streams into which the company has admitted dumping billions of gallons of toxic “production water” during its 25 years of profitable operations in the region—would re- 92 685851 Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK Document 567-1 Filed 08/15/12 Page 95 of 152 file their environmental claims in Ecuador, or that Chevron would fail in its efforts to derail any Ecuadorian lawsuit. -
Will What Happened in Ecuador Stay in Ecuador?
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Richmond Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business Volume 13 | Issue 3 Article 4 2014 Will What Happened in Ecuador Stay in Ecuador? How the Existing International Due Process Analysis May Be Ineffective in Keeping Fraudulent Foreign Judgments Out of U.S. Courts Christopher Lento Louisiana State University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/global Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, and the Courts Commons Recommended Citation Christopher Lento, Will What Happened in Ecuador Stay in Ecuador? How the Existing International Due Process Analysis May Be Ineffective in Keeping Fraudulent Foreign Judgments Out of U.S. Courts, 13 Rich. J. Global L. & Bus. 493 (2014). Available at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/global/vol13/iss3/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 35295-rgl_13-3 Sheet No. 32 Side A 09/09/2014 14:33:00 \\jciprod01\productn\R\RGL\13-3\RGL303.txt unknown Seq: 1 9-SEP-14 8:51 WILL WHAT HAPPENED IN ECUADOR STAY IN ECUADOR? HOW THE EXISTING INTERNATIONAL DUE PROCESS ANALYSIS MAY BE INEFFECTIVE IN KEEPING FRAUDULENT FOREIGN JUDGMENTS OUT OF U.S. COURTS* By: Christopher Lento** ABSTRACT: Recent evidence in the decades-old Chevron/Ec- uador litigation suggests that the $18 billion judgment rendered against Chevron by an Ecuadorian court may have been a product of conspiracy and fraud on an al- most unprecedented scale. -
Nadler Letter .Sept10
STEVEN R. DONZIGER 245 WEST 104TH STREET, SUITE 7D NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10025 (917) 566-2526 September 10, 2020 The Honorable Jerold Nadler 2132 Rayburn House Office Building The United States House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Re: Chevron’s Attacks On Environmental Lawyer Steven Donziger Dear Chairman Nadler: I write to ask you to consider initiating an investigation of the oil giant Chevron’s disgraceful misuse of the federal judiciary to violate the fundamental rights of me and my family and to deny 30,000 Ecuadorians—many of them Indigenous peoples—a $9.5 billion judgment as compensation for more than 30 years of appalling environmental crimes. I’ve attached the names of 24,000 people who signed an online letter asking you and Congress to take this action. This case has been covered extensively by the mainstream press and generated attention from hundreds of human-rights lawyers, dozens of Nobel Laureates, the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, and two retired U.S. federal judges, but none of this has changed Chevron’s actions. I believe you are the only person in America who can shift Chevron’s behavior, as a result of the immense power you wield as Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. First, as regards my personal situation, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School and one of your constituents as a resident in Manhattan for the last 25 years. As a lead lawyer on this successful and historic case, I have for the last 13 months been detained without trial in my Manhattan apartment where I live with my wife and young son. -
Chevron V. Donziger RICO Opinion
Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK-JCF Document 1874 Filed 03/04/14 Page 1 of 497 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x CHEVRON CORPORATION, Plaintiff, -against- 11 Civ. 0691 (LAK) STEVEN DONZIGER, et al., Defendants. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x OPINION Appearances: Randy M. Mastro Richard H. Friedman Andrea E. Neuman FRIEDMAN | RUBIN Reed M. Brodsky William E. Thompson Zoe Littlepage Anne Champion Rainey C. Booth GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER, LLP LITTLEPAGE BOOTH Attorneys for Plaintiff Steven Donziger G. Robert Blakey William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Attorneys for Defendant Steven Donziger and Professor Emeritus Steven R. Donziger & Associates LLP Notre Dame Law School Amicus Curiae Julio C. Gomez JULIO C. GOMEZ, ATTORNEY AT LAW LLC Attorney for Defendants Hugo Gerardo Camacho Naranjo and Javier Piaguaje Payaguaje Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK-JCF Document 1874 Filed 03/04/14 Page 2 of 497 Case 1:11-cv-00691-LAK-JCF Document 1874 Filed 03/04/14 Page 3 of 497 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................1 Facts........................................................................5 I. The Background ...................................................5 A. Texaco’s Operations in Ecuador ................................5 B. Aguinda ...................................................7 1. The Principal Plaintiffs’ Lawyers in Aguinda ...............8 -
Chevron's Abusive Litigation in Ecuador
Rainforest Chernobyl Revisited† The Clash of Human Rights and BIT Investor Claims: Chevron’s Abusive Litigation in Ecuador’s Amazon by Steven Donziger,* Laura Garr & Aaron Marr Page** a marathon environmental litigation: Seventeen yearS anD Counting he last time the environmental lawsuit Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco was discussed in these pages, the defen- Tdant Chevron Corporation1 had just won a forum non conveniens dismissal of the case from a U.S. federal court to Ecuador after nine years of litigation. Filed in 1993, the lawsuit alleged that Chevron’s predecessor company, Texaco, while it exclusively operated several oil fields in Ecuador’s Amazon from 1964 to 1990, deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest to cut costs and abandoned more than 900 large unlined waste pits that leach toxins into soils and groundwater. The suit contended that the contamination poisoned an area the size of Rhode Island, created a cancer epi- demic, and decimated indigenous groups. During the U.S. stage of the litigation, Chevron submitted fourteen sworn affidavits attesting to the fairness and adequacy of Ecuador’s courts. The company also drafted a letter that was By Lou Dematteis/Redux. Steven Donziger, attorney for the affected communities, speaks with signed by Ecuador’s then ambassador to the United States, a Huaorani women outside the Superior Court at the start of the Chevron former Chevron lawyer, asking the U.S. court to send the case trial on October 21, 2003 in Lago Agrio in the Ecuadoran Amazon. to Ecuador.2 Representative of Chevron’s position was the sworn statement from Dr. -
Challenge to Socialism Formerly American Medicine and the Political Scene
MARJORIE SHEARON CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM FORMERLY AMERICAN MEDICINE AND THE POLITICAL SCENE Vol. IV, No. 36 November 16, 1950 81st Congress, Second Session In Outrageous Move With complete disregard United States Menaced The United States is Truman Appoints Anna for the people's man- Should Have only Most fighting for its very life. Rosenberg Assistant date, President Truman Trusted Persons in Every person selected Secretary pf Defense on November 9 announ- National Defense Jobs for a high position in ced he would appoint a the Defense Department top New Dealer, Mrs. Anna M. Rosenberg, to be should be chosen in the national interest. Every Assistant Secretary of Defense. Despite the na- such person should be of unquestioned loyalty and tional repudiation of the New-Fair Deal at the integrity and should have a long record of unsel- polls, the President saw fit to make an interim fish public service. Every such person should be appointment which surprised, shocked, and cha- an American through and through. There is no grined many persons. It was even more trans- place in the Defense Department for persons who parent that Defense Secretary George Marshall have flirted with Communist collaborators and had had "Mrs. Fix-It," as she has been called, who have advocated the establishment of State planted on his staff. The Chicago Tribune of Nov- Socialism in the United States. ember 13 suggests that Presidential adviser John Because of the seriousness of the times and R. Steelman, who had planned to go into business the significance of this appointment, the Editor has with Mrs. -
14-0826(L) Chevron Corp. V. Donziger UNITED STATES COURT OF
Case 14-832, Document 319-1, 08/08/2016, 1834987, Page1 of 127 14-0826(L) Chevron Corp. v. Donziger 1 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 2 FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT 3 - - - - - - 4 August Term, 2014 5 (Argued: April 20, 2015 Decided: August 8, 2016) 6 Final briefs submitted June 1, 2015 7 Docket Nos. 14-0826(L), 14-0832(C) 8 _____________________________________________________________ 9 CHEVRON CORPORATION, 10 Plaintiff-Appellee, 11 - v. - 12 STEVEN DONZIGER, THE LAW OFFICES OF STEVEN R. DONZIGER, DONZIGER 13 & ASSOCIATES, PLLC, HUGO GERARDO CAMACHO NARANJO, JAVIER 14 PIAGUAJE PAYAGUAJE, 15 Defendants-Appellants, 16 STRATUS CONSULTING, INC., DOUGLAS BELTMAN, ANN MAEST, 17 Defendants-Counter-Claimants, 18 Pablo Fajardo Mendoza, Luis Yanza, Frente De Defensa De La Amazonia aka Amazon 19 Defense Front, Selva Viva Selviva CIA, LTDA, Maria Aguinda Salazar, Carlos Grefa 20 Huatatoca, Catalina Antonia Aguinda Salazar, Lidia Alexandra Aguinda Aguinda, Patricio 21 Alberto Chimbo Yumbo, Clide Ramiro Aguinda Aguinda, Luis Armando Chimbo Yumbo, 22 Beatriz Mercedes Grefa Tanguila, Lucio Enrique Grefa Tanguila, Patricio Wilson Aguinda 23 Aguinda, Celia Irene Viveros Cusangua, Francisco Matias Alvarado Yumbo, Francisco 24 Alvarado Yumbo, Olga Gloria Grefa Cerda, Lorenzo José Alvarado Yumbo, Narcisa Aida 25 Tanguila Narváez, Bertha Antonia Yumbo Tanguila, Gloria Lucrecia Tanguila Grefa, 26 Francisco Victor Tanguila Grefa, Rosa Teresa Chimbo Tanguila, José Gabriel Revelo 27 Llore, María Clelia Reascos Revelo, María Magdalena Rodríguez Barcenes, José Miguel -
Maurice Sugar Papers
THE MAURICE SUGAR COLLECTION Papers, 1907-1973 58 1/2 Linear Feet Accession Number 232 Maurice Sugar was one of the first American lawyers to become what is now known as a "Labor Lawyer." Before he was made Chief Legal Counsel of the United Automobile Workers, a post he held between 1937 and 1948, he had practiced as a labor lawyer and defender of the poor since 1914. Born in Brimley, Michigan in 1891, he was educated in the Detroit school system. He graduated from the University of Michigan Law School where he was Editor of the Michigan Law Review. In 1914 he and Jane Mayer were married. She later became Supervisor of Elementary School Physical Education for the City of Detroit. Sugar's first client in 1914 was the Detroit Typographical Union (AFL), and before his work with the UAW he represented nearly all Detroit area unions including the Detroit and Wayne County Federations of Labor (AFL) and various AFL international unions. During the Tool and Die Makers Strike of 1913 he handled over two-hundred cases in the courts. During World War I Sugar was indicted and convicted in a conspiracy trial (1917-1918), as he was a pacifist, but he was subsequently readmitted to the bar and pardoned. Active during his youth in the Socialist Party he later became an important spokesman for what were then considered "left wing" causes, including civil rights and racial equality. He was one of the founders of the National Lawyers Guild and an early advocate of pensions, unemployment compensation, social security and other such measures. -
View Issue As
national lawyers guild Volume 68 Number 4 Winter 2011 Turn to the Constitution in 193 Prayer: Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Obama, the Constitutionality and the Politics of the National Day of Prayer Gail Schnitzer Eisenberg Anatomy of a “Terrorism” 234 Prosecution: Dr. Rafil Dhafir and the Help the Needy Muslim Charity Case Katherine Hughes The National Defense 247 Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012: Battlefield Earth Nathan Goetting editor’s preface On April 17, 1952, with the U.S. nearly two years into the bloody “police action” against the “Godless Communists” in Korea and Tailgunner Joe McCarthy at the height of his foaming and fulminating power in the Sen- ate, President Truman signed into law a bill requiring presidents to exhort Americans to do the one thing the First Amendment seems most emphatic the federal government should never ask citizens to do—pray. The law establish- ing the National Day of Prayer was the result of a mass effort of evangelical Christians, such as Billy Graham, who rallied support for it during one of his “crusades,” to use the organs of government and the bully pulpit of the presidency to aid them in their effort to further Christianize the nation. After a push by the doddering Senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, who for decades expressed a uniquely southern zeal for God matched only by his uniquely southern zeal for racial segregation, the law was amended in 1988 so that the National Day of Prayer would be fixed on the first Thursday of every May. It has since become a jealously guarded and zealously promoted evangelical holiday of the politically active Christian right, who use it to perpetuate the false and self-serving narrative that a nation whose founding documents were drafted largely by Enlightenment-era skeptics and deists was actually designed by a council of holy men to be an Augustinian City of God. -
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national lawyers guild Volume 68 Number 3 Fall 2011 Promises and Challenges: 129 The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011 Delegation of Attorneys to Tunisia from: National Lawyers Guild (US), Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers (UK),and Mazlumder (Turkey) Brief of Amicus Curiae in 174 Support of Ward Churchill Cheri J. Deatsch & Heidi Boghosian Book Review: Breeding Ground: 189 Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism Marjorie Cohn editor’s preface This issue begins with a study of the recent revolution in Tunisia titled, “Promises and Challenges: The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011.” In March, 2011 a group of Guild members joined an international delegation to Tunisia to investigate the causes and consequences of the recent deposition of Tuni- sian strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The report of this delegation is an exhaustive and remarkably engaging story of a bottom-up spontaneous revo- lution against a repressive autocratic regime propped up by western powers, who found Ben-Ali an eager ally in the “global war on terror.” The revolution in Tunisia is one of the seminal events of the great “Arab Spring” of 2011, a world-historical year that will forever be remembered for the uprisings that occurred throughout the Islamic world. This report serves as a contemporary account of the Tunisian revolution written from an anti-imperialist perspec- tive by human rights-minded legal researchers during its immediate aftermath, many of whose sources both lived through and participated in events that have changed history. The second feature in this issue is the Guild’s latest amicus brief on behalf of Ward Churchill.