On the one hand, this sounds bad for Chevron. On the other hand, what is the probability that corruption happened in an Ecuadorian court vs a US court? It seems to me somewhat more likely that the Ecuadorian court was corrupt here, than that Chevron managed to influence a US judge to this degree. Of note, he could simply turn over his phone and this would end. There is no assertion here that he is protecting some wit…
In Forbes there is a contributer "Michael I. Krauss" who subscribes openly and fully to the view that Chevron is innocent, that any pollution is due to the Ecuadorian petrol company and that Donziger is a crook [1] who fixed the trial through bribery. This blog post (one day later) by Clyde Osborne also takes Chrevon's side [2]. Weirdly both articles use the similar phrase
"If I were a legal journalist, I would track down Mr. Donziger's legal ethics professor at Harvard. I would ask that professor what he or she thinks of his or her former student. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. Note to HLS's Associate Dean: I would be delighted to teach that seminar. It would be a great case study about how not to practice law."
and
"If I had been a felony journalist, I might track down Mr. Donziger’s felony ethics professor at Harvard. I would ask that professor what he or she thinks of his or her former pupil. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. Note to HLS’s Associate Dean: I might be overjoyed to educate that seminar. It would be a tremendous case observe how now not to practice law."
That's a bit weird. Ironically today's article did speak to Charles Nesson, an attorney and Harvard Law School professor who takes Donziger's side and even "teaches Donziger's case in his “Fair Trial” course, using it as an example of a decidedly unfair trial." This other publication also seems to be more aligned with Donziger [3].
This is clearly a divisive issue with 9 billion dollars at stake for Chevron and millions at stake for Donziger (Chevron demanded a few years ago that he pay for all of their legal fees and he was fined for comtempt of court too) and so I'm not sure how much you could trust any reports unless you put a lot of time into studying this issue in depth. There's so much money swilling around and both sides have accused the other of running misleading publicity campaigns through to outright propaganda.
To me it still seems like a massively unequal fight though and demonstrates that a sufficiently funded corporation can crush most people legally if they wish to. Legal costs are simply too expensive for most individuals.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/07/17/suspen... [2] https://lawcer.com/2019/07/18/suspended-ex-attorney-steven-d... [3] https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2019/10/18/chevron-m...