The Corporate Kill Shot: Chevron vs. Steven Donziger

The [F]law  podcast team sits down with Steven Donziger to discuss his litigation efforts against Chevron and his subsequent detainment by the US government.

Steven Donziger is a human rights lawyer who has spent the last three decades in a protracted fight to hold Chevron, an American oil company accountable for wreaking devastation on indigenous communities and farmland in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Beginning in the 1970s, Texaco, now owned by Chevron, began drilling for oil in the Amazon. As a result, rural farmers and indigenous communities were victims of an enormous ecological catastrophe. Chevron dumped billions of gallons of hazardous oil waste and millions of gallons of crude oil on Amazonian land leading to toxic pollution that contributed to widespread illness among the Ecuadorian people. When Steven Donziger visited the region, he described the landscape as an apocalyptic disaster. In response to Chevron's pollution, Donziger and a team of like-minded lawyers brought a class action lawsuit on behalf of over 30,000 indigenous people and rural farmers in Ecuador against Chevron. In legal documents, Donziger's team contended that Chevron's activity created an "Amazon Chernobyl" spanning 1700 square miles. Although in 2011, Donziger was able to initially win an $18 billion judgment against the oil company in Ecuadorian court. Chevron has since spent hundreds of millions of dollars to evade accountability, paying dozens of law firms to use a variety of novel and nefarious legal tactics to help complete its campaign to destroy Steven Donziger and his work.

To learn more about Steven Donziger and the fight for environmental justice in Ecuador:

• Free Donziger
• Vice Video - The World’s Worst Oil Disaster You’ve Never Heard Of

Episode credits:

• Hosted by Andrew Rossi-Schroeder
• Produced by Liz Turner
• Edited by Liz Turner and Sean Healey
• Music by Sean Healey

The [F]law Podcast is the audio arm of The [F]law, an online magazine that shares stories that reveal how corporate law and power create social problems and systemic injustices. The [F]law publishes pieces that identify how corporate power has infiltrated social and political institutions, analyzes how it controls them, and proposes methods for dismantling corporate control & building collective power. The [F]law is the product of the Systemic Justice Project and the Critical Corporate Theory Lab at Harvard Law School. Through conversations with lawyers, journalists, organizers, and community advocates, we share stories that reveal how corporate law and power create social harms and systemic injustices.

Learn more about The [F]law Podcast on our website. 

Transcript

The [F]law Podcast – Steven Donziger 

Steven Donziger [00:00:01] Texaco, now owned by Chevron, deliberately dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into rivers and streams. We started the case. If you were lawyers, we're going to go to court and get a remedy for our clients. Chevron didn't think that way. They captured essentially a pocket of the US federal judiciary and prosecuted me and detained me. I was the corporate prisoner. This is a pure retaliation play by Chevron. It was just shocking to me that they could get away with it. 

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:00:59] Welcome to the [F]law Podcast, a podcast produced by Harvard Law School students, where we share stories that reveal how corporate law and power create social harms and systemic injustices. I'm Andrew Rossi-Schroeder. I'll be host of today's Interview with Steven Donziger. Steven Donziger is a human rights lawyer who has spent the last three decades in a protracted fight to hold Chevron, an American oil company accountable for wreaking devastation on indigenous communities and farmland in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Beginning in the 1970s, Texaco, now owned by Chevron, began drilling for oil in the Amazon. As a result, rural farmers and indigenous communities were victims of an enormous ecological catastrophe. Chevron dumped billions of gallons of hazardous oil waste and millions of gallons of crude oil on Amazonian land leading to toxic pollution that contributed to widespread illness among the Ecuadorian people. When Steven Donziger visited the region, he described the landscape as an apocalyptic disaster. In response to Chevron's pollution, Donziger and a team of like minded lawyers brought a class action lawsuit on behalf of over 30,000 indigenous people and rural farmers in Ecuador against Chevron. In a legal documents, Donziger team contended that Chevron's activity created an Amazon Chernobyl spanning 1700 square miles. Although in 2011, Donziger was able to initially win an $18 billion judgment against the oil company in Ecuadorian court. Chevron has since spent hundreds of millions of dollars to evade accountability, paying dozens of law firms to use a variety of novel and nefarious legal tactics to help complete its campaign to destroy Steven Donziger and his work. Steven Donziger, thank you so much for being with us today. 

Steven Donziger [00:03:08] Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:03:10] If you could just begin by telling us how you got involved in this case and what you saw on the ground when you ventured into Ecuador. 

 Steven Donziger [00:03:20] So I got involved, I was a student at Harvard Law School where I met another student whose father was from Ecuador, who talked about there being this awful pollution problem down in the Amazon. And, you know, we graduated and decided to . . .  we had other jobs, but at the time, we decided to organize a team of people, lawyers, and medical people, and public health people to go down and investigate. And we found, you know, as you point out in the opening, an apocalyptic disaster that is was and is to this day, probably the world's worst oil pollution. Texaco, now owned by Chevron, as part of their operational practice down there in the Amazon, deliberately dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into rivers and streams and into groundwater and into the soils. The rivers and streams had been relied on for millennia by indigenous peoples for their drinking water, for their bathing and for their fishing. And really, in a few short years, they decimated the natural ecosystem that had been relied on for, you know, from time immemorial by five indigenous groups who could no longer function in the same kind of way. And their cultures were, for the most part, completely disrupted and diminished. And Chevron ended up, you know, producing down there for 25 years using these, what we believe are, illegal operational practices. And they pulled out billions of dollars of profit. And to this day, people are still in the region. There's not been a cleanup and people are hurting. And in our estimation, thousands of people have died of cancer and other oil related diseases. [00:05:12]It's really probably one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Unlike others we see, like perhaps what's going on in the Ukraine right now, the one in Ecuador is happening little by little, day by day. It's almost imperceptible because there's very little attention being focused on it. But every day a few more people die. And over a period of years, the death toll is really frightening. And it will get even worse if nothing is done to clean it up. [28.0s] So, you know, after that trip, I went down as a lawyer and I work with other lawyers to try to help the affected communities get a remedy, get compensation, and to hold Chevron accountable. And that really had a huge impact on my professional life. I mean, essentially, I've been working on this case now for 28 years. We've made enormous progress, but there's still work to do and Chevron still hasn't paid people it poisoned down there. So the legal battle continues, and I'm still very involved in it. 

 Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:06:09] So you said you started working on this lawsuit on behalf of these affected communities in Ecuador 28 years ago. How quickly did you face pushback from Chevron? 

Steven Donziger [00:06:19] Well, the the case was filed on November 3rd, 1993, a long time ago. And the pushback began immediately. I mean, this is this is what corporations and their defense firms do. And they file motions to try to get rid of the case. They you know, Chevron's first line of defense was to avoid a trial or a trial, By the way, on these issues, no matter the ultimate outcome, the very process of a trial imposes a huge amount of accountability on the perpetrator of these environmental crimes. So they tried to avoid a trial and they fought for ten years to shift the venue from U.S. federal court, where the case was initially filed here in New York, where Texaco's headquarters was at the time. And they wanted it shifted down to Ecuador, where they had operated, you know, for decades with complete impunity. I mean, there wasn't even much as much of a $50 fine ever imposed on them for this toxic dumping that they were systematically doing into the rainforest. So we filed a case. You know, we do what lawyers are trained to do, do the lawsuit. And of course, they hired, you know, a big corporate firm at the time, King and Spalding, to try to get rid of the case. So, you know, that began the first battle, really three stages of this case. Stage one was trying to get into the US court that lasted ten years throughout the nineties into the early 2000s, and there was massive litigation at the trial court level, the appellate court level here in New York to try to figure out if the trial could be held in New York. And ultimately Chevron, which had by then bought Texaco, won that battle and they got the case shifted down to Ecuador where they thought they could just engineer a political dismissal of the case. There was a silver lining, though, because as a condition of shifting the case down to Ecuador from the U.S. court, Chevron had to accept the jurisdiction of Ecuadorian courts for purposes of the claims. So that gave us a huge leg up that allowed the trial in Ecuador to proceed very quickly once the case moved down to Ecuador. 

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:08:29] Now, I believe then, as is true now, Chevron's revenue is more than double the GDP of Ecuador. And when they move that case to Ecuadorian court, do you think that had any bearing on what kind of power and sway they had over manipulating the lawsuit to their benefit? 

Steven Donziger [00:08:51] First of all, certainly their thinking was to move it to Ecuador because they thought it would be easier to engineer a dismissal of the case and avoid a trial. They failed, though. And by the way, they've made these calculations almost every step of the way that are consistent with how most corporate defendants in these types of cases think. It just so happens we've overcome their thinking virtually every step of the way, and we continue to overcome their strategy. But, you know, they certainly thought that they could get the case dismissed. As a matter of fact, the very first day of the trial, October 21st, 2003, the trial was taking place in a town called Lago Agrio, which was the site of Texaco's first well. Lago Agrio is a Spanish phrase for Sour Lake because Texaco went down there and named this town after Sour Lake, Texas, which was its headquarters in the United States. And they, by the way, this was Cofán indigenous territory, but Chevron discovered Texaco, sorry, discovered oil there, and then built the whole town around their first well and displaced the Cofán people deeper into the rainforest. And that was this little town was where the trial was being held. And it was very clear from the beginning they didn't really want to be there. Their lead lawyer from the United States, a guy named Ricardo Reyes Vega, on the very first day of the trial in Ecuador, was not in Lago Agrio. He was in the capital, Quito, meeting with the attorney general of the country. And he convinced the attorney general of the country to call the trial judge down to Lago Agrio, get them on the phone -- this is all, you know, behind closed doors -- and basically lambast him for letting the trial start and urge him to dismiss the case. On the theory that Chevron had some agreement with Ecuador's government where they supposedly couldn't be put on trial by Ecuador's own citizens for the damage caused. It didn't work. But it's really indicative of how Chevron plays the game, the litigation game. [00:10:58]You know, one thing I realized and this is, I think, a lesson for law students who want to do this work is, you know, we started the case thinking we're lawyers. We're going to go to court and get a remedy for our clients. Chevron didn't think that way. They basically see the courts as just a little arena as part of a much larger arena of power where they can try to control, manipulate, abuse, and and basically harass their litigation adversaries. [30.1s] I mean, they they didn't respect courts. It was clear from the beginning that they thought they could just manipulate the case out of existence by putting political pressure on the judge. It didn't work, but it really was a taste of what was to come, which was this constant effort by Chevron to undermine the case, sabotage the case, delay the outcome of the case so they wouldn't have to pay the judgment. And I'll remind people, like when you're in a situation where you're hurting, you know, when you represent people like the indigenous peoples with very little or no money and you're up against an adversary with a massive amount of resources, you know, those asymmetries of power really can alter the landscape, alter the playing field. And to be able to hang in there and to get this company to trial and prevent the corruption from taking root. So the claims get dismissed was a huge accomplishment, but it was a constant battle, took constant vigilance, took a massive amount of work which they tried everything to avoid an outcome. For us to win, we need to win. [00:12:39]We need to collect money to pay for the cleanup. For Chevron to win, there just has to be no outcome. I mean, they don't need to win like defeat us. They just need to be sure we don't finish. And that's why it's lasted 28 years. [15.2s] And probably in their minds, they think that's sort of a okay result. I mean, that was their strategy that this thing never ended and they said as much. You know, they threatened the indigenous peoples with a lifetime of litigation unless they dropped the case. That was their own words. So [00:13:09]it raises all sorts of issues about justice and about, you know, how the legal system works relative to how it's supposed to work. [8.5s] But bottom line is: the indigenous peoples won the case and Chevron has refused to pay. So the battle now is can we get them to pay?  

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:13:41] So you want this $18 billion judgment against Chevron in 2011. Chevron still hasn't paid victims a penny or cleaned up the environment. What specific strategies has Chevron used to dodge this judgment? 

Steven Donziger [00:13:55] Well, you know, the short answer is they use their resources to just keep raising issues to avoid a resolution. So this involves multiple steps. If you break it down, step one is that prior to the end of the case in Ecuador, they removed all of their assets from Ecuadorian courts. And remember, multinational companies have an advantage because judicial decisions are, you know, issued in national court systems. Multinational companies keep their assets all over the world. So you can do asset shifting to avoid accountability. And [00:14:36]they anticipated they would lose the case. Some of the evidence against them was overwhelming. And they quietly sold off all their gas stations in Ecuador, removed all their assets out of the country, so we wouldn't be able to collect on the judgment in Ecuador. [14.9s] So at the end of the case, when they lost, there were appeals and they fought us on appeal. We won every level of appeal, including in Ecuador Supreme Court, Ecuador's constitutional court. We've got unanimous decisions affirming a judgment. They then basically said, well, we don't think we were given due process in the venue where we wanted the trial held, and they challenged the indigenous peoples who had virtually no money to chase them around the world, trying to get them to pay. And so there were these various layers of obstruction to the process that these companies can pay for pay law firms to do both in the United States and other countries to delay an outcome because they calculate it's far cheaper to pay lawyers to delay an outcome than to actually deal with the underlying problem in economic decision and also a power decision because they don't want vulnerable communities to collect significant legal judgments against them. I mean, God forbid it might actually inspire other communities around the world harmed by Chevron's pollution to copy us and to do the same. So, you know, in their minds it's just a little litigation game where they can pay lawyers who are experts in obstruction to keep the ball rolling. You know, I mean, in Ecuador itself, there was in one hour they once filed 60 different motions in one hour, largely duplicative. But, I mean, the court they tried to overwhelm the court system and basically grind the case to a halt through the filing paper. You know, I mean, no judge could alone, you know, dispose of all those motions in a reasonable period of time. That's exactly what they wanted. [00:16:40]You know, they had dozens of lawyers trying to overwhelm the one judge who was overseeing the trial in Ecuador. And then on top of that. They develop all sorts of sort of bizarre legal theories that they force judges to deal with. [14.4s] I'll give you one example. When we went into Canada to try to collect their assets. Chevron has a lot of operations in Canada, a lot of billions of dollars of assets. We won some legal victories in Canada. Then they began to argue that the whole case should be thrown out because their entire operations in Canada, although wholly owned by Chevron, were housed in a subsidiary called Chevron Canada. So there's Chevron. Canada was a Chevron asset, but it was a subsidiary wholly owned by Chevron. And they argue that there are two different entities. So given that the judgment in Ecuador was against Chevron. And the asset that we were trying to seize was called something else. They claim we couldn't get it. The whole case was futile and should be thrown out. And if you can believe that an appellate court in Canada agreed with them, then I think because they were just so scared to go up against Chevron. But the legal theory makes no sense. I think it's incorrect as a matter of law. But like just litigating that issue took two, three years, you know, added two or three years to the toll. And they do that kind of thing constantly. I mean, they have this theory that the Ecuadorians can never collect because they sued Chevron, and Chevron doesn't exist anywhere in the world except through its subsidiaries. So therefore, they can never collect because you can't collect against the subsidiary, which is preposterous. I mean, it's basically a recipe for complete impunity for human rights violators. But the point is, [00:18:30]they they pay these really sophisticated legal tricksters. I mean, they masquerade as respectable lawyers. You know, they come from big law firms like Gibson, Dunn Crutcher, Jones Day, Kingman, Spalding, Simpson Thatcher, you know, some of the more prestigious U.S. law firms, Quinn Emanuel. And they are simply paid massive sums of money. Some of these lawyers charge $1500 dollars or more an hour, and they came up with these very clever theories, and then they present them to judges who, by the way, in this country are more and more inclined to believe or to work with these theories because they're coming out of the whole Federalist Society world. And through these various processes, they can sort of keep the ball rolling. [50.0s] And, you know, to fight all of this takes a massive amount of sophistication and resources. And when you are representing, people would not who don't have money and you have to sort of go out and raise the money to do this, it's an added burden that Chevron doesn't have because they have tons of money. So it's all, I would say, largely a function of an abuse of the process. [00:19:47]It's a function of, I think, a fundamental weakness in judiciaries, both in the United States and Canada, which even remain focused on judges or come out of the corporate law world, and they just don't know what to make of a case of indigenous peoples with a multibillion dollar judgment against a company like Chevron. They're scared to help the people enforce their completely legitimate judgment. So to look for any little reason to not rule, I mean, there's literally been almost 200 judges, 200 judges. who have looked at this case in 28 years. [32.0s] Some aspect of this case is like, I'm waiting for that one courageous judge to basically say this is B.S. like we are going to move this forward or you are not going to be able to avoid this judgment any longer, because in the 28 years of litigating this, [00:20:37]I can't tell you the amount of suffering people have had to endure in Ecuador as a result of these delays. I mean, many, many people have died during this period of time and will continue to to to pass away from oil related causes because of their pollution and because of their delays. You know, so I think it's an outrage. It's been a hell of an education about the law that I never got in law school, by the way, no disrespect to Harvard or any other law school, but this kind of thing is just not taught in law schools for the most part. [31.2s] So it's been a real journey. However, let me say this I'm optimistic they will pay. I think their game is exhausting. It's getting exhausting to even look at, and it's so obvious what they're doing. And given the magnitude of the problem, I still have faith that courts will force them to pay this judgment. 

 Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:21:33] Obviously, many powerful corporations use their money and influence to evade accountability for the harms that they cause. But what's particularly startling about this case is that Chevron took the unprecedented step of going after you individually. Can you tell us about Chevron's campaign to ruin you and your career? 

Steven Donziger [00:21:53] Sure. So I am in probably a unique position in the annals of the American judicial system. By the way, I am not arguing that I'm in a worse position. There are so many problems in our justice system, as you know. There's so many issues. But what happened to me I've never seen before. It's a different kind of animal. Basically, when, you remember when I said that, you know, [00:22:19]their first line of defense is that they would avoid a trial? When that failed, they tried to sabotage the trial. When that failed and they lost the case, they tried to sabotage the appeal. When it appeared that would fail, they really did two things. One is they tried to prevent enforcement of the judgment in countries where they had assets. Use that to delay the process. And they also targeted me and other lawyers. They hired a firm called Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, which had marketed to Chevron this methodology they call the "kill step," which is fundamentally this: When a lawyer, a plaintiff's lawyer, wins a big judgment, they market themselves as a as the law firm that can blow it up and prevent it from being enforced. And the main way they do that is they target the lawyer who did it with career threatening allegations, usually involving fraud that are based on either completely fabricated factual notions or very distorted notions of what happened. [66.0s] And they take these allegations to court and then they shift the focus from what the role that their client committed to the lawyer who represented the victims of the wrong, as if he or she did something wrong. And that should be the main focus of the of the battle. And they've done this to multiple lawyers in various cases. And they carted out this kill step theory to Chevron. At that point, Chevron had been represented by the Jones Day law firm. So they basically put Jones Day to the side, and they brought in Gibson Dunn, and they went after me and they claimed I was a criminal. They basically tried to get the U.S. attorney to prosecute me for racketeering. Their theory was that the entire case in Ecuador was a fraud, that it was a sham, that there was no real pollution that was harming anyone, and that I had manipulated the courts of Ecuador to engineer a judgment against them that didn't have a basis in the evidence. That was their theory. It was actually a mirror reflection of exactly what they had done or tried to do. They basically accused me of trying to manipulate the system, and that's what they had done for all those years. That's all they think. That's how they function, especially in these developing countries, where they think they're not being watched, they can get away with it. So one thing led to another, but they sued me under the civil RICO law. They denied me a jury. They paid a witness 2 million or more dollars to come into court to claim I proved a bribe of the trial judge, which is totally false, and had been rejected by courts in Ecuador, this allegation. But there was no jury. The judge really ran a farcical proceeding and the first person in U.S. history ever to be tried under civil RICO, a civil RICO statute without a jury. [00:25:19]And the judge is former tobacco defense lawyer who came out of that same corporate law world as Chevron's lawyers basically engineered the outcome against me and wouldn't let me testify. [12.3s] There's all sorts of problems with the trial and found that I had committed fraud in Ecuador based on the largely based just on the witness testimony of this paid Chevron witness. So they then couldn't get any money from me because to get to avoid a jury, they had to drop all money damages claims on the eve of trial, by the way, they'd sued me for treble under 18 billion. So I was sued for almost $60 billion personally. So they tried to bankrupt me by asking the judge to order me to pay $32 million of their legal fees. And I'm a human rights lawyer. I live in a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And I you know, I saved a little bit of money, but I'm not a man of great means, and I could never afford to pay them $1,000,000, much less 32 million. So that was all designed to take away my money. You know, I have a wife and a son. You know, this is all the layers of attack that they used to try to kill the lawyer, you know, and to win by might what they cannot win by merit. We kept going anyway. I'm a very resilient person, by the way, so we raised more money and started to rack up legal victories in Canada in the enforcement action, including before Canada's Supreme Court. And we got a unanimous favorable decision in 2015. And when that started to happen, they needed to come up with some reason to attack me again. So they went back to Judge Kaplan, who was the judge who presided over the RICO case, and they asked, among other things, to see my computer and cell phone on the theory that I was hiding money, that I owed them for their legal fees. I had no money and they knew it. But this was all just a harassment mechanism that they wanted to use to find out what our plans were and to put me in a position where my clients might fire me, you know, because I have ethical duties to them to preserve or to protect attorney client protected information, which is on my computer. So I was very honest with the judge and I said, you know, I can't do this. Like this would violate all my ethical duties. I asked them to hold me in civil contempt so I could appeal his order. The way you can appeal a civil discovery order in the United States in the middle of a proceeding is to be held in contempt. And he wouldn't do it. He kept letting Chevron harass me and subpoena third party witnesses and just try to undermine the case that way. And ultimately, he did hold me in civil contempt. I did appeal and while my appeal of his, I think completely unlawful order was pending, he charged with criminal contempt of court for not complying with the order that was under appeal. And he had me locked up and I ended up, to make a long story short, I was charged with a misdemeanor contempt of court that I think was completely baseless. The charges were rejected by the U.S. federal prosecutor in Manhattan. We had to take them to the judge, took them to the SDNY. They refused to prosecute me. The judge then appointed a private corporate law firm to prosecute me, and, it turns out the law firm, the name of which is Sewarr and Kissel had Chevron as a client, and none of that was disclosed. We. figured it out like six months later. They were basically an oil and gas law firm and they were prosecuting me in the name of the U.S. government. They were the ones who sought my detention as a risk of flight, which was obviously bogus. I'm the only lawyer in the U.S. ever locked up prior to trial on a misdemeanor, on a contempt of court charge, and I ended up serving 993 days in my lodging in my home, but also 45 of those days in federal prison on a misdemeanor, the maximum sentence of which is to me, you're guilty, which I'm not, is 180 days. As a matter of fact, the longest sentence ever given a lawyer who was convicted of my supposed offense was 90 days of home confinement. So I serve over ten times that amount. This is a pure retaliation play by Chevron. And they captured essentially a pocket of the U.S. federal judiciary and prosecuted me and detained me. [00:29:29]I was the corporate prisoner or corporate, I would say political prisoner in the United States of America as a Harvard Law grad. [8.8s] And it was just shocking to me that they could get away with it. But, you know, here I am. It's it's over. By the way, that phase of the of their little attack campaign, it's ended in a strong and we're doing great. But it's really was incredible that they were able to get get that to happen. 

 Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:30:13] Stephen, I want to focus on what formed the basis of the fraud allegations against you that ultimately led to your confinement. There was a single Ecuadorian official who accused you of bribery. It eventually came to light that Chevron paid this man more than 20 times his annual salary in Ecuador to testify against you in court. This man and his family were moved to the U.S. on Chevron's dime, and this man was actually coached by Chevron's lawyers for over 50 sessions on how to testify against you. Now, this man later admitted that he had perjured himself. He had no knowledge of you committing bribery in Ecuador. Yet on the basis of these allegations, you were disbarred and sentenced to house arrest. This kind of thing is incredibly rare in the U.S., right? 

Steven Donziger [00:31:05] Well, I. I'd like to think it's very rare in the United States. I mean, [00:31:09]we are or purport to be a rule of law country. I've never seen this kind of a thing happen before. But of course, no one had ever seen a situation where U.S. lawyers working with indigenous peoples in the Amazon won a large multibillion dollar judgment against a U.S. company. [16.5s] You know, So this was all new to everybody. I think the more ground we gain, the more of a financial risk we present to both Chevron and the fossil fuel industry, sort of the more naked the acts of corruption become in response, and not just from Chevron, but from the judges involved. It wasn't just the RICO judgment against him, which was completely bogus based on this false witness testimony. It also was the fact that that judgment rejected by multiple appellate courts in Ecuador and in Canada, was used as a basis to disbar me without a hearing where I could challenge Judge Kaplan's factual findings. I mean, I essentially got disbarred, you know, based on one judge's factual findings in a non-jury trial. And I couldn't challenge them even though I had all the evidence. [00:32:20]So there was a real collusion among a lot of judges. I'm not saying they met in a room and decided to do this. I think it's sort of just institutional, mutual self-protection, you know, from various judges and various courts who just like one judge, would read what Judge Koppel wrote, and then he'd say, well, that must be right. So we'll go with Judge Kaplan. Then another judge reads with that judge wrote about Judge Kaplan, and just everyone just sort of shrinks out of the defense system that's polluted. [26.6s] And no one understands that they're all getting their heads all whacked out over the truth, because, I mean, no U.S. judge wants to actually read an Ecuadorian court opinion in Spanish based on 220,000 pages of record evidence and 64,000 chemical sampling results and understand that actually it is a good decision based on competent evidence. Instead, they just go off this false witness testimony because this U.S. judge decided to try to bring me down. I think it's a real low point for our judiciary among many in our history. But I am shocked that a successful human rights lawyer in the United States was locked up in his home and imprisoned for almost three years for winning a case. It was retaliation for winning a case against Chevron. 

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:33:37] A US human rights lawyer was locked up on trumped up charges, fabricated by Chevron and later proven to be false. How is this story not on the front page of every major newspaper? 

Steven Donziger [00:33:50] Well, my opinion is, first of all, there have been some independent news outlets who covered it. The Intercept the Nation, among them, various podcasters. But, you know, the main the mainstream media, you know, the networks, the cable networks, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal almost completely ignored this the situation not only for the people of Ecuador, but for me as a lawyer in the United States. You know, I mean, what happened to me is a massive human rights violation. By the way, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ordered the U.S. government to release me when I was detained and the U.S. government ignored it. And they ordered the US government to investigate how this could happen. Again, ignored. So, you know, this is a human rights problem. It's acknowledged by many lawyers around the world and in this country. And, you know, the judges just get away with it. There's virtually impunity. I mean, you know, if you have a complaint, by the way, against a federal judge with a lifetime appointment is very little you can do or means no independent mechanism to hold judges accountable except through the impeachment process of Congress. And that just you just that's impossible. I mean, never happens. It's happened four times in our history. Of all the thousands of trial judges in U.S. history, only four have ever been impeached. You know, so here you have a judge who I think is completely abusing his power. By the way, 200 plus lawyers signed a complaint against Judge Campbell, which they submitted to the Second Circuit. There's like a disciplinary process that citizens can avail themselves of. And the Second Circuit Appellate court here in New York, and they just ignored it. I mean, they blew it off in like a one page order. It was a 50 page plus page complaint, which you can get on our website, by the way, a free Donziger account. [00:35:44]It just seems like it's a very closed circle of control dominated by corporate law firms and corporations. You know, it really goes back to the point I made earlier, which is Chevron never saw the legal process as as a really a contest where they had to play by the rules as they're written. They just saw it as another forum that they could manipulate in service of their own self-interest and power. And that's how they see these courts. [31.1s] And, you know, when we had the temerity to go down to Ecuador and actually win a case, they came back here and corrupted this corner of the U.S. judiciary here in New York to lock me up without a jury, you know, and disbar me without a hearing. And you take all my money without a hearing. Vice Media did a really good 12 minute segment called this The worst Oil disaster you've never heard of. If you want to. You know, it's been very hard to get the mainstream media to focus on this. 

 Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:36:50] In trying to protect and fight for victims of human rights abuses. You've been disbarred, confined to house arrest. You've been deprived of your ability to make a living. How can lawyers and advocates who want to fight similar battles not be intimidated to the point of an action after witnessing what you've gone through? 

 Steven Donziger [00:37:11] Well, my advice is don't be scared. The work can be done and it can be done successfully as we improve it. I mean, I know that it's sort of hard to absorb the fact that I, you know, a person with my background, ended up in this situation for these reasons, but I've never seen this before, and I really don't expect to see it again, which is why I'm very outspoken and I talk about it as much as I can because people need to be aware of it. [00:37:38]And this case goes well beyond me. You know, it's really about what kind of world we want to live in. What is what is this thing we call democracy? Know, what is free speech in America? [12.0s] If by being an advocate, you can get locked up? You know, that's what people do. Where we hear about happening in many other countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Russia and China, among others, It's happening here. So the point of the exercise from Chevron's point of view is to intimidate people into not doing the work. [00:38:13]So I would encourage people to do the work. Like, the only way we can do this is to lean into it and keep going and call it out and unite. And there's all sorts of coalitions that have come together, like the protect the protest movement in the law, Students for Climate Accountability. And there's so many groups that have come together and there's power in numbers, and we need to really have solidarity with each other. We need to form the mechanisms where you can do this work and get protected. At the same time. You need resources and you need support. [29.1s] Most of this kind of in frontline environmental justice work litigation can happen not at this level. I mean, this is an extraordinarily high stakes litigation, both in terms of the money and the precedent. So that's prompted Chevron to, I think, spend a massive amount of resources by the reviews of 60 law firms and 2000 lawyers on this case. And I work out of my apartment. So, you know, that's not going to happen in most cases. The stakes are not going to be nearly as high. And also, I think given that Chevron, I think it's largely been exposed, I don't think they're going to be able to get away with this kind of thing again, as long as the lawyers doing the work have the right kind of strategy in place and have engagement with the public, with media, with social media platforms and the like. So I would encourage people to do the work. What happened to me is almost surely never will, almost surely never will happen to you. I just want to be clear about that. [00:39:47]And there's so much richness and texture in life that you get out of doing this kind of work. It's very meaningful and it's very mission driven. And I'm really proud of what we've accomplished and remind people we won. We won the case. Chevron lost. Okay. I want to be very clear about that. What happened to me is because we won. That's why it happened that retaliated and they corrupted the process. But we won. They lost. They're still losing. That's a historical fact that won't change. And as a result of our victory, there are lawyers out there working to make sure they pay. Every penny of that judgment Hasn't happened yet, but I do believe it will happen. [37.8s]

 Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:40:26] Steven, this podcast is coming from your alma mater, Harvard Law School. What would you say to the law students who are joining the ranks of big law firms? 

 Steven Donziger [00:40:37] [00:40:37]Well, my advice: is that really the legacy you want? I mean, there's so many interesting law jobs and so many interesting ways to use your law degree to deal with address some of the basic problems of our world, the injustice of climate, you know, climate change and the like. And, you know, I think the people working in those firms are not happy with their careers. I just don't. I mean, many of them make a lot of money. But the reality is, on the plaintiff's side, if you want to be a trial litigator, you can do really good work and still make a very good living, even better than the big defense lawyers and the corporate firms. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with making a good living like you don't have to sacrifice your salary to do social justice work necessarily. I mean, you can still make money and you should I mean, you need to be financially secure in order to be effective as a professional. So I would encourage people to look for a path where they can make the money they need to support themselves in a way that makes them secure, allows them to pay off loans, which, by the way, are a whole other sort of Damocles that is created by the system to make people indebted, force them into these corporate forms. But there are ways that that you can get beyond that, get past that. [85.2s] Harvard, one of the institutions that has all sorts of programs in that regard. But I would say to the people going into those firms, man, if you got to go in to pay off your loans, try to get into a practice group that doesn't really do this kind of stuff and also try to get out of there as soon as you can. I mean, the most important thing is to do what you feel passionate about, and if you do that, you'll be better at what you do. You'll have more fun. And over the long haul, I believe you'll actually make more money because you'll be really good at whatever it is you do. 

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:42:39] Steven, final question for you. How can we help you and the victims of this egregious corporate harm in this fight against Chevron? 

 Steven Donziger [00:42:48] Well, I would say number one is spread the word like learn about this. We have a website called Freedonziger.com, which is freedonziger.com, one word, it's dot com. There's all sorts of articles and information. So, you know, read about it, learn about it, spread the word, support me. We have on the website a petition. Right now we have a petition to Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, to join my petition to ask the Supreme Court to grant cert. to my appeal of my misdemeanor contempt conviction on the grounds that private corporate prosecutions are a violation of the rule of law and a violation of the Constitution. And so you can sign that petition. You can give us your information. You'll get regular case updates. And of course, we're always raising money for my defense from a defense fund, both for me and the people of Ecuador who continue to try to get their judgment. So if you can give to donate money, that'd be great. We've had so many people around the world step up, which has allowed us to keep going. And even if you only give a dollar or $5 or $10, your your your donation will be treated with great affection. And it would be deeply appreciated. But that's not really the main point. The main point is to go to the site, learn more about it, and spread the word again. It's freedonziger.com. 

 Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:44:16] Steven Donziger, thank you so much for being here with us. 

 Steven Donziger [00:44:19] Thank you for having me. 

Andrew Rossi-Schroeder [00:44:29] Thank you for listening to this episode of The [F]law Podcast. Produced and edited by Liz Turner with Original Music by Sean Healey. The [F]law Podcast is a production of Harvard Law School's Systemic Justice Project and the [F]law Magazine, an online publication that explores how corporate power creates social harms and systemic injustices. A special thanks to Professor Jon Hanson, Director of the Systemic Justice Project and The [F]law's Editor in Chief. I'm your host, Andrew Rossi Schroeder.