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Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

theintercept.com

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Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#91

Post by onetimemanytime »

shkkmo wrote: post #46
onetimemanytime wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charges were for violating US law. Chevron claimed that he paid off Equatorian judges, manufactured evidence etc. >> The decision hinged on the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge named Alberto Guerra, who claimed that Donziger had bribed him during the original trial and that the decision against Chevron had been ghostwritten. A lot of stuff happens in such places, but when you take on Chevron size companies, you bette…

Chevron can't "bribe" the judge... They can just pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars and get him US residency while taking extreme care in prepping his testimony (which somehow still contained lies and inconsistencies after all that prep.)

Oh, I meant that Chevron pays local attorney $3.7 million for fees and $2 Million are taken by that lawyer to bribe the judge. Chevron hears and sees no evil, they just pay their bills in time.

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#92

Post by jessaustin »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #81
praptak wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's telling that nobody even mentions using your vote in the public elections.

Telling of a good thing, surely? It's not ideal if the first instinct for solving every problem in society is "oh we'd better send the government in".

Help us out here... we were thinking this was about a series of court cases? Who owns the courthouse?

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#93

Post by heartbreak »

tptacek wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #61

This article is obscenely misleading. Skip the narrative, and go straight to the 500 page Southern District of New York opinion finding that Donzinger procured the Ecuador judgment through extortion and fraud: http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecua... > Upon consideration of all of the evidence, including the credibility of the witnesses – though several of the most important declined to testify…

Wow, this is a hell of a find.

Agreed. The suggested source, http://theamazonpost.com, is like something out of a nightmare. Really puts into perspective the angle provided by The Intercept.

(Yes the link goes to a court opinion, just remarking on the host itself.)

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#94

Post by rayiner »

34679 wrote: post #90
rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally just a factual description of what Chevron is.

Chevron is not the only producer of petroleum products in the world and not every person in the world relies on Chevron's products every single day. It's absurd to call that statement factual.

As a simple matter of grammar, that's not what he's saying. He says that Chevron is a manufacturer of a "group of commodities" that "on which every one of us depends every single day." The sentence means that people rely on the group of commodities, of which Chevron is one producer.

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#95

Post by alexandercrohde »

rayiner wrote: post #78
alexandercrohde wrote: post #74

This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything. We have documents alleging person X said Y, because of Z. Without any real first-hand knowledge, none of us actually know how reputable the justice system is in Ecuador, how plausible bribery is, or much at all. First hand, all we know is web-pages on the internet. I think maybe it's best to take a step back from th…

> This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything. Not true. We do know stuff. On one side, you have a decision of the Ecuadorean courts upholding the judgment. On the other side, you have decisions from the U.S. and the Netherlands saying that the judgment was procured by fraud. And you have decisions from Canada, Argentina, and Brazil that do not get into the fr…

That's my point. I know nothing.

All I know is what intermediaries (whom I've never met) say. The Ecuadorian judge says the American judge is lying, the American judge says the Ecuadorian judge is lying. I personally haven't looked at any evidence. And if I did, how could I personally know if it's valid?

You're caught-up and emotional in this one tiny thread which is insignificant. We should be talking about the larger problem.

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#97

Post by naringas »

naringas wrote: post #53

the law as a system of rule to organize society is failing (another example is those kids prosecuted for child porn because they took pictures of themselves before being over the age of consent). money rules society, and legality works for money; at the sime time, money as a system is encoded and enforced by the legal system. we have built a civilization/socity which has trapped us. the matrix is not made out of comp…

all these kind of weird comments I make as an attempt of being critical ofthen get downvoted. I don't understand why but the outcome is I make less of them and think twice before posting (I probably shouldn't post this, but meh, this is public self-introspection).

My take away is that I should somehow make them better but I don't understand why some get downvotes.

maybe I make big and unjustified logical jumps? maybe I'm to paranoid? in any case I think way too much...

some examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21851332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21536936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20175491 (this is a taboo topic, always thread carefuly near those)

and one in which I did 'it' correctly, but it took like 20 minutes to write: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20991015

another "good" one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18603793

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#98

Post by e12e »

tptacek wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #61

This article is obscenely misleading. Skip the narrative, and go straight to the 500 page Southern District of New York opinion finding that Donzinger procured the Ecuador judgment through extortion and fraud: http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecua... > Upon consideration of all of the evidence, including the credibility of the witnesses – though several of the most important declined to testify…

Wow, this is a hell of a find.

Right, it's linked from the intercept article:

> Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication[1] to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him.

[1] this is a link to the Amazonpost.com.

So,is it really set up and run by Chevron for the purpose of discrediting?

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#99

Post by e12e »

heartbreak wrote: post #93
tptacek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this is a hell of a find.

Agreed. The suggested source, http://theamazonpost.com , is like something out of a nightmare. Really puts into perspective the angle provided by The Intercept. (Yes the link goes to a court opinion, just remarking on the host itself.)

Note that the intercept article links to theamazonpost as an example of stuf Chevron did to discredit the lawyer - that is setting up the site/publication (see my sibling comment).

Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything

#100

Post by pfdietz »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #44
darawk wrote: post #16

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…

If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this? I mean we are not asked to believe anything crazy here. A company made enormous environmental damage. Is that premise hard to believe? Next they refused to pay or invent excuses? Again nothing odd about that. Some lawyer takes up…

> If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this?

Absolutely nothing immoral about that. Having been wronged, Chevron is morally entitled to do absolutely anything short of illegality against this creep.

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