Chevron Ecuador Case A Shambles, Former Backer Says

[FreakinDJ]

http://blogs.forbes.com/danielfisher/2010/12/17/chevron-ecuador-case-a-shambles-former-backer-says/?boxes=businesschannelsections">Chevron Ecuador Case A Shambles, Former Backer Says

Chevron’s said it all along, and now we learn that the lawyer who backed the long-running lawsuit against the oil company over pollution in the Ecuadorean jungle agrees: In an August, 2010 letter, Philadelphia attorney Joseph Kohn excoriates plaintiff attorney Steven Donziger and says even if he wins the judgment will be unenforceable in the U.S. or anywhere else.

The letter is part of a huge cache of internal documents Chevron’s attorneys dumped at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York as part of a filing involving Chevron’s efforts to investigate the criminal indictment of its lawyers in Ecuador. The plaintiffs maintain the lawyers were involved in a release of pollution claims under a prior regime they say was fraudulent; Chevron cites internal plaintiff documents suggesting the indictment was part of a strategy to “leverage” settlement talks.

The most damning words may come from Kohn, however, who didn’t immediately respond to request for comment. A wealthy Philadelphia plaintiff attorney, he was a lawyer on the case and supplied much of Donziger’s financial backing. In the August letter to plaintiff representatives in Ecuador, he expresses surprise at the revelations which emerged this summer about the plaintiff team’s contacts with an expert appointed by the court in Lago Agrio, Ecuador to investigate the pollution claims. That expert has estimated the cost of cleanup, paying for cancer and other illnesses, and repaying ill-gotten profits could be as high as $27 billion. Kohn says the contacts — detailed in outtakes from the documentary Crude that were turned over under court order — “may have been outrageously improper conduct.”

We now find out that there may have been extensive, systematic contacts, orchestrated by Donziger, and with your participation and agreement, which have threatened the entire case. And, of course, we find out about it in part as a result of the utter stupidity, arrogance and conceit of inviting a film to be made documenting this improper conduct.

http://blogs.forbes.com/danielfisher/2010/12/17/chevron-ecuador-case-a-shambles-former-backer-says/?boxes=businesschannelsections