MANHATTAN (CN) — "It's time to pay the piper," a New York federal judge wrote Monday in convicting disbarred environmental and human rights attorney Steven Donziger on six counts of contempt.
Donziger faced six misdemeanor counts of contempt of court for allegedly disobeying the orders of U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in a case where Donziger and indigenous Ecuadoreans living in the oil-polluted Amazon rainforest stood accused of obtaining a $9.8 billion verdict against Chevron through fraud on Ecuador's court system.
Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, drafted the contempt counts himself and tapped private counsel to lead the prosecution against Donziger after the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to do so.
Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, a George H. W. Bush appointee who presided over the bench trial in May, did not let Donziger off the hook for disobeying Kaplan's orders to, among other things, turn over his computer, phones and other electronics.
"The court does not question the sincerity of Mr. Donziger’s espousal of his clients’ cause. Nor does it quarrel with the sincerity of his belief that he has been treated unfairly by Chevron," Preska wrote in a 245-page order issued Monday. "But 'a lawyer, of all people, should know that in the face of a perceived injustice, one may not take the law into his own hands,' By repeatedly and willfully defying Judge Kaplan’s orders, that is precisely what Mr. Donziger did. It’s time to pay the piper.”
She concluded, "Because the special prosecutors have proven each element of criminal contempt of a court order beyond a reasonable doubt, the court finds and renders a verdict of guilty on each of the six counts of criminal contempt.”
Donziger called the verdict the "latest attempt by Chevron and its judicial allies to criminalize me and to send a message of intimidation to legitimate human rights lawyers who successfully challenge the major polluters of the fossil fuel industry."
"Although Judge Preska drafted the decision to be bloated so as to appear overwhelming – a classic tactic by judges who try to criminalize advocates – the decision says very little," he said in a statement Monday afternoon. "It merely executes the marching orders given by Judge Kaplan who has spent over a decade protecting Chevron from accountability for its environmental and human rights crimes in Ecuador by implementing what Chevron has called the 'demonize Donziger' strategy.”
Donziger’s attorney Martin Garbus said he plans to immediately appeal to the Second Circuit and expects a reversal swiftly.
“The conviction by the judge was a certainty,” Garbus wrote in an email Monday. “As Judge Preska admits, this case, the prosecution and the sentence is unprecedented.”
Donziger’s defense team foresaw his conviction before the bench trial even began. “At the end of this case, we will ask you, but know you will not, to return a verdict of not guilty on all counts,” Garbus anticipated in his opening argument.
Donziger became involved in the decades- and continent-spanning case when indigenous and farmer residents of the Ecuadorean rainforest tapped him to sue Chevron’s predecessor Texaco in 1993, alleging that the company left behind an environmental and public health disaster for the 30,000 residents of Amazon.
Chevron’s first step after acquiring Texaco was to secure the dismissal of that initial case in New York, saying the litigation belonged where the drilling occurred: the Ecuadorean city of Lago Agrio, whose name is a nod to Texaco's former headquarters in Sour Lake, Texas.
Come 2011, an Ecuadorean judge awarded the plaintiffs $18 billion for environmental damage caused by Texaco during its operation of an oil consortium in the rainforest from 1972 to 1990. Ecuador’s highest court upheld the verdict three years later, but reduced the judgment to about $9.5 billion.
In the meantime, Chevron filed suit in New York to undercut any obligation it had to honor the Lago Agrio judgment. Though it had promised back in the '90s to abide by the Ecuadorean court system, it later insisted that Donziger's fraud voided this obligation.
Chevron took on Donziger personally in the New York litigation, convincing Kaplan that he had attempted to “shake down” the company for billions by pressuring it to pay an illegitimate judgment.
As the Ecuadoreans fought to collect on the judgment, Kaplan charged Donziger with several counts of violating court orders, appointed the Chevron-linked Seward & Kissel law firm as prosecutors and sent the case to his colleague Preska.
Donziger’s legal team has accused Preska of bias because of her connections to the Chevron-funded Federalist Society, and launched an unsuccessful motion for her recusal from the case.
Before becoming partner at Seward & Kissel, the lead prosecutor in the case, Rita Glavin, was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and, later served as second-in-command at the Department of Justice Criminal Division under President George W. Bush. President Barrack Obama appointed her to oversee the Criminal Division’s transition after he took office in 2009.
Glavin, who is representing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as he faces mounting allegations of workplace sexual harassment, left the partnership at Seward & Kissel in March to launch her own law firm, Glavin PLLC.
Follow Josh Russell on Twitter
Follow @jruss_jruss
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
Feds decline protections for ancient lake sturgeon April 22, 2024
