Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer (opens in new tab)

Mark Ruffalo made an excellent movie about it.

Dark Waters trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY

The way public opinion, journalism, and justice work in America, unless Ruffalo makes a great movie about the "Amazon Chernobyl", Steven Donziger is going to spend a lot more time in his apartment, and Ecuadorians are not going to get that $9.5 billion.

> In 2014, after a full trial before Judge Kaplan, Donziger and the other defendants were found guilty of engaging in conspiracy and criminal conduct.

> “Donziger and the Ecuadorian lawyers he led corrupted the Lago Agrio case. They submitted fraudulent evidence. They... falsely presented [a damages assessment] as the work of the court-appointed and supposedly impartial expert, and told half-truths or worse to U.S. courts in attempts to prevent exposure of that and other wrongdoing. [They] 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,” Judge Kaplan found. “If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it.”

> The ruling was affirmed by a decision issued by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2016, with the appellate court finding “no basis for dismissal or reversal” of the district court’s judgment, noting that “the record in the [case] reveals a parade of corrupt actions… including coercion, fraud and bribery, culminating in the promise to Judge Zambrano of $500,000 from a judgment in favor of the [plaintiffs].”

So...it seems like he probably did engage in corruption to secure the original verdict.

Not that I'm defending the fossil fuel industry. They've always played dirty with cleaning up their messes (see also the mining industry, who use the same dirty tactics).

I get that there's a connection because Big Oil. And Climate Justice, kinda. But this is a pollution lawsuit.

The danger is that if we only oppose pollution if it's also about climate, then we won't fight when it's "just" pollution. We need to hold their heads to the grinder for polluting the places they operate in, because the money needs to be spent cleaning those places up. Which is also a danger - if any wins from this get diverted into fighting climate change, then who pays to clean up this mess?.

Or maybe it's just a journalist trying to spice up a story. Again.

[0]: https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/418-the-cool-zone-fe...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWApxvSjMKY