Legal News

Chevron, Donziger Continue To Spar Over Ecuadorean Case

By Chad Bray

The rhetoric continues to fly between lawyers for Chevron and Steven Donziger, the U.S. legal adviser to a group of Ecuadorean citizens suing over environmental damage in that country’s Amazon region.

The quick backstory: a U.S. judge  earlier this month granted an order blocking the Ecuadorean plaintiffs from seizing the oil company’s assets elsewhere as part of multi-billion-dollar judgment in Ecuador in February. The record $18.2 billion judgment is being appealed in Ecuador and came in long-running litigation over alleged oil damage in Ecuador’s rainforset by Texaco Inc., which Chevron acquired in 2001.

Chevron wants to make the U.S. judge’s order permanent and has asked to break out that claim out of a civil racketeering lawsuit it has filed in the U.S. against the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and their  lawyers. Chevron, which has alleged they tried to defraud and extort the company, wants to hold a quick, separate trial.

In a court filing Monday, John Keker, a lawyer for Donziger, said Chevron is trying to block Donziger from participating. Donziger has been a repeated target of the ire of Chevron’s lawyers.

“Donziger will be severely prejudiced if a trial in which his allegedly fraudulent and criminal conduct is at issue is held without his participation, as Chevron has requested, and without a jury first resolving all factual issues pertaining to Donziger’s alleged misconduct,” Keker said.

In court papers, Chevron’s lawyers have said that creditors–the Ecuadorian plaintiffs themselves–are the only persons who should be able to participate in proceedings on the enforceability of the Ecuadorean judgment, not Donzinger. Chevron, which wants a trial on that portion of the case within three to six months, noted that many of the Ecuadorean plaintiffs have chosen not to appear in the U.S. case.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 22, 2011 (boomark / email).