MANHATTAN (CN) — With trial still months away, taxpayers have paid more than a quarter-million dollars to a private law firm deputized by a federal judge to convict an environmental attorney of misdemeanors.
That is only one of the many oddities of United States v. Steven Donziger, a criminal contempt case against a lawyer defending a more than $9 billion verdict that he helped Ecuadorean villagers obtain against Chevron for oil contamination in the Amazon rainforest in 2011.
“So — the punchline is: The government has spent $254,930 to date prosecuting a misdemeanor,” Donziger’s attorney Zoe Littlepage summarized in an email to her co-counsel and her client. “There has been 1,001 hours of work done.”
Obtained exclusively by Courthouse News, billing records from Donziger’s unusual criminal prosecution show how much the white-shoe law firm Seward & Kissel has collected since being appointed as the “government” roughly a year ago in lieu of the Department of Justice.
Those bills, for professional services rendered from August 2019 through the end of May this year, have not come with traditional government rates.
The firm already has billed nearly 75 times more than the maximum a court-appointed private criminal defense attorney can collect for defending indigent clients facing misdemeanor allegations, and the private prosecution’s billable hours show no signs of abating.
“DOES ANYONE ELSE FIND THIS UNBELIEVABLE,” Littlepage exclaimed in the email dated Monday.
Spanning nearly three decades and continents, the legal saga over Ecuadorean pollution has been filled with surprises. Donziger helped rainforest residents and indigenous groups stun much of the world nearly a decade ago with the defeat of Chevron in Ecuador, and the oil giant’s relentless counterattack took unexpected turns in a quest to discredit that verdict as a product of fraud and racketeering.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who ruled for Chevron in 2014, presided over what began as a civil dispute before personally demanding the creation of a criminal one. The Clinton appointee drafted the charge sheet and handpicked the prosecutors. In this next stage, however, it is U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, the former chief of the Southern District, who reigns.
Calling himself a “corporate political prisoner,” Donziger has spent almost a year under house arrest fighting allegations that he flouted court orders to turn over more evidence to Chevron. Donziger argues that complying with those orders, now under appeal in the Second Circuit, would violate his duty to his clients.
How Donziger’s fortunes have changed can be symbolized by one of his new lawyers: Ron Kuby, the legendary criminal defense attorney known for his flamboyant and passionate defense of political icons like Malcolm X to, more recently, the woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty to protest the Trump administration's family-separation policy.
One of two celebrity attorneys name-checked when a protagonist got in trouble in the Hollywood film "The Big Lebowski," Kuby expressed admiration for his newfound client.
“I had admired and respected Steven's work for many, many years, and I had followed the David-versus-Goliath contest in various courtrooms around the world,” Kuby remarked in a phone interview. “And I noted that David appeared to be losing, at least in the American courts.”
When the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute Donziger, Judge Kaplan appointed Seward & Kissel to pursue the case on July 30, 2019, almost exactly one year ago.
“Private prosecutions are rare in America and have been rare for pretty much since the beginning of the republic, and the reason for that is obvious enough: You don't want interested private individuals having state power against defendants,” added Kuby.
