Human Rights Lawyer Steven Donziger in Prison After Multi-Decade Legal Battle Against Chevron
In 2011, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger won a multi-billion dollar judgment against Chevron for environmental contamination on behalf of indigenous people in Ecuador. A decade later, Donziger is serving prison time for criminal contempt. Chevron still has not paid.
In the 1960s, the Ecuadorian town of Lago Agrio was founded by Texaco as a base camp for oil extraction. Between 1964 and 1992, serious ecological problems developed as a result of Texaco’s operations, including deforestation, soil contamination, water pollution, and rising cancer rates among indigenous communities. In 1993, residents launched a class-action lawsuit to force Texaco to pay for decontamination as well as care for the 30,000 residents whose health had been put in jeopardy. This lawsuit continued for well over a decade, even as Chevron acquired Texaco in 2000. (North) In 2011, the plaintiffs, represented by Donziger, won a judgement against Chevron in the Ecuadorian courts totalling $9.5 billion. It was hailed as an enormous victory for environmental activists and indigenous communities of Ecuador -- the sum represented roughly half of what BP agreed to pay for its enormous Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Chevron, however, was not going to take this judgment lying down. Chevron had long argued it bore no responsibility for any toxic waste left in the Lago Agrio oil field, citing the fact that Texaco had spent $40 million dollars on cleanup in the 1990s, which the government at the time had deemed sufficient. (Romero, Krauss) But activists and indigenous communities have argued that Texaco only cleaned up a fraction of its pollution, and attempted to hide its mess by covering its waste dumps with mud instead of cleaning it properly. (freedonziger.org)
Determined to avoid paying up, the company got a court order forcing the filmmakers behind the 2009 documentary Crude - which profiled the Ecuadorian ecological crisis - to turn over hundreds of hours of unused footage. In some of this footage, Donziger can be seen strategizing how to win the judgment. Chevron argued that this footage, as well as evidence that the plaintiffs had ghostwritten an expert report that had been used in trial, constituted grounds for dismissing the 2011 judgement. (Nocera)
Chevron used this new information to retaliate against Donziger. Using RICO statutes, more commonly used to target mob bosses than human rights attorneys, Chevron argued that Donziger had engaged in fraud, (Nocera) and in 2014, a corporate-friendly Manhattan judge ruled that Donziger had violated racketeering laws, and that the US had no authority to hold Chevron accountable to the Ecuadorian judgment. (North) In the wake of this ruling, Donziger was made liable for millions of dollars worth of Chevron’s legal expenses, and in 2019, Chevron was granted seizure of his computer and other electronic devices. (Helmore) When Donziger appealed this decision, Judge Kaplan asked a federal prosecutor to put him on trial for criminal contempt. When that prosecutor refused, Kaplan hand-picked a prosecutor from the private law firm Seward & Kissel to oversee the trial, a firm Donziger has argued acts as Chevron’s legal arm. (North)
On July 31st, 2019, the private prosecutor in Donziger’s criminal contempt trial placed him in “home detention” - legalese for house arrest - out of concern that he was a flight risk, and might abandon his family in New York to go live in the Ecuadorian rainforest. (North) He remained in home detention for over two years, unable even to step into the hallway of his apartment complex without court approval. The arrangement strained his home life, he says, and went on far longer than he anticipated. (Helmore) In 2020, Donziger was disbarred in the state of New York. And on October 1st of this year, Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty of criminal contempt, arguing he had “repeatedly and willfully” defied court orders and sentencing him to six months in prison. (Helmore) He began his sentence on October 27th at the minimum-security prison in Danbury, CT. (freedonziger.org)
Public awareness and outrage about Donziger's legal battles in the last 10 years, which he has described as a “kafkaesque” persecution by Chevron, has grown as his case received more media attention. Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and other high-profile organizations have come to his defense. UN legal experts have argued that the US violated international law by holding Donziger in house arrest for four times the length of the maximum sentence of six months that can be handed down in a contempt case. A number of celebrities have also rallied to support him, including Roger Waters, Sting, Trudie Styler, Danny Glover, and Alec Baldwin. And of course, he has the continued support of most of the plaintiffs he represented in his initial crusade against Chevron, who have still not received the reparations they were promised after their 2011 victory. (freedonziger.org)
Sources:
Freedonziger.org. “Timeline of the Case” https://www.freedonziger.org/timeline-of-the-case
Helmore, Edward. “Lawyer Steven Donziger gets six-month sentence for contempt in Chevron battle.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/01/steven-donziger-lawyer-sentenced-contempt-chevron
Malo, Sebastien. “Lawyer who sued Chevron sentenced to six months in contempt case.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/lawyer-who-sued-chevron-sentenced-six-months-contempt-case-2021-10-01/
Milman, Oliver. “The lawyer who took on Chevron - and now marks his 600th day under house arrest.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawyer-steven-donziger-ecuador-house-arrest
Nocera, Joe. “An Environmental Hero or Outlaw? Can It Be Both?” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/business/dealbook/steven-donziger.html
North, James. “Is Chevron’s Vendetta Against Steven Donziger Finally Backfiring?” https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/steven-donziger-chevron-sentencing/
Romero, Simon and Krauss, Clifford. “Ecuador Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion.” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/world/americas/15ecuador.html