The baseline story is boringly familiar. American company exploits third world nation’s resources to great profit, at the expense of local indigenous populations and the planet itself, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
A big old snore; business as usual, what’s on HG-TV?
The first plot twist is that the Ecuadorian courts held Chevron accountable this time, to the modest tune of nine billion of the profit dollars they extracted from the country.
You might think they’d just pay it and move on, as they probably would have in America. They paid out five times as much when their toxic waters rolled up on the Gulf Coast after Deepwater Horizon.
But they chose intead to put their teams of well-paid successful lawyers to work on fighting back–probably because sitting still for a just punishment from a court in a less powerful nation would open them up to dozens of twin cases all over the world, because this really is business as usual.
The second plot twist is that they also decided to go after the well-intentioned and competent New York lawyer who won the nine billion dollar judgment.
He’s being run up the yardarm for the crime of being a class traitor.
His name is Steven Donziger. He tells his own story here.
Chapo Trap House 418 (5/11/20)
One of the more interesting pieces to the story is that the law firm hired to go after him has built an entire practice on just this thing–nailing lawyers who have offended corporations to the wall, and ruining their lives for daring to represent people who would otherwise have no representation.
Their job is the methodical destruction of the good guys. I can’t imagine anything more unambiguously evil. (Though I would compare it to the mother/daughter "women’s rights" cartoons who secretly arranged to smear Rose McGowan and other Harvey Weinstein accusers.)
Further reading
The Intercept, in January:
How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything
The Intercept, in May:
Judge Rules That Attorney Steven Donziger Must Remain Under House Arrest Until September