[darawk]

On the one hand, this sounds bad for Chevron. On the other hand, what is the probability that corruption happened in an Ecuadorian court vs a US court? It seems to me somewhat more likely that the Ecuadorian court was corrupt here, than that Chevron managed to influence a US judge to this degree.

Of note, he could simply turn over his phone and this would end. There is no assertion here that he is protecting some witness from harm. The fact that he is unwilling to do that should give us some pause.

[robochat42]

Think about it from the lawyer's point of view. If the story is article is accurate then someone has a vendetta against him. Someone has already spent a lot of money on an Ecuadorian judge to fabricate evidence against him. Now they want his phone and computer. Who knows what they could 'find' on them.

Even if the truth is more murky than presented in this article. He may have needed to contact shady people as part of his work and this could clearly be used to smear him.

Of course, the article could be a gross misrepresentation of the truth but a quick google search reveals that the feud between Chevron and Donziger has been widely reported and lasted more than 20 years. The fact that he is unwilling to hand over his phone is just the latest salvo in a long battle.

[socialdemocrat]

If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this?

I mean we are not asked to believe anything crazy here. A company made enormous environmental damage. Is that premise hard to believe? Next they refused to pay or invent excuses? Again nothing odd about that.

Some lawyer takes up the case and wins. Again nothing out of the ordinary. The company fights him tooth and nail. Nothing weird thus far.

What is novel is really just the extent to which they have gone to smear him and destroy him. That they are motivated to do this is not strange at all.

[SpicyLemonZest]

If they honestly believe the guy created a fraudulent scheme to steal billions of dollars from them, no, it doesn’t seem particularly immoral to spend millions making sure he gets in trouble for it.

[pfdietz]

> If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this?

Absolutely nothing immoral about that. Having been wronged, Chevron is morally entitled to do absolutely anything short of illegality against this creep.

[robochat42]

I've read a few more articles on the subject now. One side or the other is lying through their teeth but I've no idea which side. It's depressing how possible it is for someone to argue almost any point of view especially if they are shameless and willing to lie and it's so hard to prove anything.

In Forbes there is a contributer "Michael I. Krauss" who subscribes openly and fully to the view that Chevron is innocent, that any pollution is due to the Ecuadorian petrol company and that Donziger is a crook [1] who fixed the trial through bribery. This blog post (one day later) by Clyde Osborne also takes Chrevon's side [2]. Weirdly both articles use the similar phrase

"If I were a legal journalist, I would track down Mr. Donziger's legal ethics professor at Harvard. I would ask that professor what he or she thinks of his or her former student. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. Note to HLS's Associate Dean: I would be delighted to teach that seminar. It would be a great case study about how not to practice law."

and

"If I had been a felony journalist, I might track down Mr. Donziger’s felony ethics professor at Harvard. I would ask that professor what he or she thinks of his or her former pupil. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. Note to HLS’s Associate Dean: I might be overjoyed to educate that seminar. It would be a tremendous case observe how now not to practice law."

That's a bit weird. Ironically today's article did speak to Charles Nesson, an attorney and Harvard Law School professor who takes Donziger's side and even "teaches Donziger's case in his “Fair Trial” course, using it as an example of a decidedly unfair trial." This other publication also seems to be more aligned with Donziger [3].

This is clearly a divisive issue with 9 billion dollars at stake for Chevron and millions at stake for Donziger (Chevron demanded a few years ago that he pay for all of their legal fees and he was fined for comtempt of court too) and so I'm not sure how much you could trust any reports unless you put a lot of time into studying this issue in depth. There's so much money swilling around and both sides have accused the other of running misleading publicity campaigns through to outright propaganda.

To me it still seems like a massively unequal fight though and demonstrates that a sufficiently funded corporation can crush most people legally if they wish to. Legal costs are simply too expensive for most individuals.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/07/17/suspen... [2] https://lawcer.com/2019/07/18/suspended-ex-attorney-steven-d... [3] https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2019/10/18/chevron-m...

[55555]

wow good find. that's sketchy.