Chevron's Desperation, Evidence Tampering,and Insults to Indigenous Culture Growing in Ecuador Trial

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Amazon Defense Coalition

Chevron's Desperation, Evidence Tampering, and Insults to Indigenous Culture Growing in Ecuador Trial, Says Amazon Defense Coalition

Oil Giant's Lawyers Concoct Fake 'Forgery' to Cover Up Their Own Pattern of Unlawful Activity At Trial

QUITO, Ecuador, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With evidence growing that it has engaged in blatant misconduct to undermine an epic environmental trial in Ecuador, Chevron is now claiming that the fingerprint signatures of mostly illiterate indigenous persons filed years ago with the court as part of the original lawsuit were "forged" and that therefore the 17-year trial should be nullified.

The Chevron forgery claim, which was rejected as "false and desperate" by the plaintiffs, is part of the company's last-ditch scheme to derail an expected adverse judgment based on voluminous scientific evidence that it created the world's worst oil disaster, said Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer on the case.

"This latest allegation demonstrates again that Chevron will stop at nothing to undermine the legitimate legal claims of indigenous persons fighting for their own survival in the face of Chevron's violent and unlawful assault on their culture," said Fajardo, who represents dozens of communities who charge the oil giant dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into their streams and rivers from 1964 to 1992 when it operated in Ecuador.

"The evidence at trial shows that Chevron has engaged in a pattern of unlawful, corrupt, and fraudulent activity in Ecuador over decades and that this activity has destroyed much of the rainforest and killed many of its inhabitants," he said.

Read more: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chevrons-desperation-evidence-tampering-and-insults-to-indigenous-culture-growing-in-ecuador-trial-says-amazon-defense-coalition-112256719.html

[Arctic Dave]

1. Environmental laws are for crybabies.

Sarcasm/

[Peace Patriot]

2. Pablo Fajardo is a very great environmental and Indigenous hero!

Here's one profile of Fajardo and detail on the case in Vanity Fair (2007):

"Given the resources that Chevron has brought to bear, it seemed for a while that this indeed would happen (dismissal of the case)—and for various reasons it may yet. But over the past two years there has been a change that, metaphorically, looks something like an inversion of Tiananmen Square, in which a lone man stands resolutely in front of a maneuvering tank, not to hold it off but to keep it from escaping. In Lago Agrio that lone man is a mestizo named Pablo Fajardo, aged 34, who was born into extreme poverty and toiled for years as a manual laborer in the forest and oil fields, yet managed by force of intellect to complete his secondary education in night school, and through a correspondence course to earn a degree in law. He became a lawyer only three years ago, in 2004, yet has assumed the lead in the suit against Chevron in this, his very first trial. Chevron is represented by lawyers from Ecuador's ruling class, an oligarchy whose women fondly sing "Y Viva España" at Quito garden parties. They may have assumed that they could run Fajardo over. No one makes that assumption now."

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/texaco200705

Fajardo received the Goldman environmental prize in 2008. Here is their page on it...
http://www.goldmanprize.org/2008/centralsouthamerica

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I am so glad that Chevron/Texaco got hoist on their own petard, on this one. The suit was filed by other lawyers originally in the U.S. Chevron asked that it be moved to Ecuador, where they expected to be coddled by the then rightwing government and to be able to bully and bribe their way out of liability. Meanwhile, however, the Ecuadoran people elected a kickass leftist government on a platform of ending endemic political corruption and acting in the interests of the people of Ecuador. The new president, Rafael Correa, last year fulfilled one of his main campaign promises, by throwing the U.S. military base--long detested by a huge majority of Ecuadorns as a violation of their sovereignty--out of Ecuador.* The U.S. government and their tools in neighboring Colombia ($7 BILLION in U.S. military aid) have tried every trick in the book to slander and topple Correa, to no avail. So the atmosphere in Ecuador has radically altered toward the interest of the People and against the bullying and braying, and sometimes violent and brutal behavior, of the likes of Chevron in small third world countries.

Meanwhile, also, Pablo Fajardo grew up--a member of one of the poor communities whose fishing and hunting were decimated by Chevron-Texaco's massive toxic oil dumps, and whose brothers and sisters and he himself had to drink oily water and wash in oily water and eat food contaminated by oil and oil toxins. He got himself educated, by his own determined effort--while supporting those same brothers and sisters--got a law degree and stood virtually alone, in the initial years of the lawsuit, against one of the biggest transglobal corporations in the world, without a fax machine to his name, with nothing except amazing courage and a brilliant mind against batteries of the world's most highly paid law firms.

Chevron owes the Ecuadoran people, big time--for a mess so bad that many have described it as the "Rainforest Chernobyl." The toxic dumps cover an area the size of Rhode Island and stretch all the way to Peru, creating dead streams and forests all a long the way.

--

*(When asked about throwing the U.S. military out of Ecuador, Correa replied that he would agree to a U.S. military base on Ecuadoran territory when the U.S. permits an Ecuadoran military base in Miami!)

[gratuitous]

3. Challenging the fingerprint signatures, Chevron? Really?

This is the kind of procedural nicety that gets resolved before a defendant even appears in a case. Questions about sufficiency of service, authentication of documents and proper venue get taken care of before a defendant even begins its defense. To raise questions about fingerprint signatures 17 years into the litigation is more than desperate, it's downright cruel. I wonder if any of their former directors might be on the hook personally for damages? Seeing "Dr." Rice have to write a few personal checks would certainly make up for some of the second Bush administration. Not all of it, by a long shot, but some of it for sure.

[FreakinDJ]

4. Is that you Karen

But this dream has turned into a nightmare and legal quagmire for the environmental activists, their attorneys and the deep-pocket backers of their lawsuit against Chevron. In fact, it’s worse than that: the movie has threatened the credibility of the case as well as the reputations of attorney Donziger, filmmaker Berlinger, environmental activists Amazon Watch and their publicist Karen Hinton, and financial backer, law firm Kohn Swift and Graf. And, the damage being done to these individuals and organizations is just starting to be seen.

The recently released footage shows that two weeks before his appointment as the global expert on damages, the “independent” court expert Richard Stalin Cabrera was present at a March 3, 2007, meeting at which plaintiffs lawyers and consultants planned extensive coordination with him. According to a transcript of the tape, in the course of discussing the plan, plaintiffs’ lawyer Steven Donziger says to Cabrera: “Richard, of course you really have to be comfortable with all that.” Pablo Fajardo, the local plaintiffs’ lawyer, exhorts everyone present to “make certain that the expert constantly coordinates with the plaintiffs’ technical and legal team.” He also notes: “Chevron’s main problem right now is that it doesn’t know what the hell is going to happen in the global expert examination.”

“I hope none of you tell them, please,” Fajardo adds. After the laughter fades, he sums up: “What the expert is going to do is and sign the report and review it. But all of us have to contribute to that report,” according to a story in the American Law Litigation Daily.

When the legal case is ultimately decided, the turning point will be undoubtedly the outtakes from “Crude.” And what people will see is a fascinating study of self-destruction by Donziger, Berlinger, Amazon Watch and it founder Atossa Soltani, publicist Karen Hinton, attorney Joe Kohn and others who attempted to manipulate the media and the legal system to benefit their personal ideological and financial desires.

http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=94249