Chevron Hit With $19 Million Judgment After Jury Rejects John Connor’s Testimony

[Judi Lynn]

October 12, 2010 03:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron’s Lead Ecuador Expert Suffers Major Blow to Credibility in U.S. Trial, Court Documents Say
Chevron Hit With $19 Million Judgment After Jury Rejects John Connor’s Testimony

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--John Connor, Chevron’s lead American expert in its multi-billion dollar Ecuador environmental trial, suffered a major blow to his credibility when a U.S. jury rejected his testimony and delivered a $19 million judgment against the oil giant for causing mental retardation to several Mississippi residents exposed to its leaking gas tanks, according to court papers provided this week by lawyers on the case.

In the trial -- which took place in Jefferson County, Mississippi -- Connor conceded on cross-examination that over almost two decades of work for Chevron he has never once concluded that the impact of his client’s operations has harmed even a single person, according to the court documents. Connor testified that he knew of no circumstance where “there were any injuries of individuals that were the responsibility of Chevron or Texaco.”

Connor also tried to exonerate Chevron by testifying that any contamination must have been caused by leaks from three storage tanks owned by a smaller company in the area, not the larger tanks owned by Chevron. But when confronted on cross-examination by evidence that he had misidentified the site from a state database, Connor admitted that he had never taken any steps to definitively verify that the gas tanks actually existed on the smaller company’s property.

The clear bias in Connor’s testimony and errors in his analysis apparently shocked the Mississippi jury, which rejected his argument that Chevron had no responsibility for the cognitive deficiencies of the five plaintiffs. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $19 million in damages, said Ed Flechas, the lead lawyer on the case who made the court documents available. Chevron is appealing the decision.

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Connor’s testimony in the Mississippi case could play a significant role in the Ecuador matter, where the stakes for Chevron are considerably higher and where the company’s defense rests largely on Connor’s credibility. A new damages report prepared by a team of prominent American experts and submitted by the plaintiffs on Sept. 16 found Chevron’s clean-up costs could rise to $113 billion; a large portion of that amount is compensation for up to 10,000 cancer deaths predicted in the coming decades if there is no immediate clean-up.

More:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101012007332/en/Amazon-Defense-Coalition-Chevron%E2%80%99s-Lead-Ecuador-Expert

[flamingdem]

1. Thanks for that update! nt

[EFerrari]

2. Blam! That's awesome!

[bherrera]

3. They will not collect

These cases are appealed, and the plaintiffs do not collect so much money, if any. In the Ecuador case, it is difficult to see how the plaintiffs can collect, because Petroecuador did take over the Chevron oil fields. Therefore if conditions today are analysed, it is difficult to say which company caused the problem, Petroecuador, or Chevron, or both.