Showing posts with label Amazon Lawsuit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon Lawsuit. Show all posts

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Two Motions In Chevron's One-Sided Show Trial

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan continues to slide in Chevron's farcical "declaratory judgment" trial currently scheduled for November 14, 2011.

We have provided the copies of two important motions that were filed in the SDNY before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.

The motions demonstrate how Judge Kaplan is failing to provide a fair trial which comports with basic notions of due process or fairness. The first motion, filed by the Ecuadorian plaintiffs who recently won an $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron for systematically poisoning Ecuador's Amazon, systematically demonstrates how Judge Kaplan's expedited schedule for the trial is not only "unfair to the Ecuadorian plaintiffs but would also not be consistent with procedures compatible with due process." The motion asks Judge Kaplan to continue the trial so that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs will have a reasonable amount of time to prepare a proper defense to Chevron's baseless allegations.


THE FIRST MOTION.

THE SECOND MOTION


The second motion, filed by lawyers for Steven Donziger, a lawyer who has represented the Ecuadorian plaintiffs for the entire 18-year history of the case and the primary target of Chevron's allegations, asks Kaplan for the third time to let Donziger fully participate in the November trial. The motion argues that Chevron now seeks, with Kaplan's tacit approval, a "do over" of the trial they lost in Ecuador and seeks to make Donziger the principal focus of their trial where, due to Kaplan's decisions, he has no right to defend himself. Today's motion is unambiguous on the impact of Kaplan's rulings to date: "Unless the Court rethinks some of its decisions about who can defend, and how and when that defense should happen, the 'do over' will be a one-sided show trial without any semblance of fairness or due process or concern for the merits."


Contact:

Hinton Communications
1215 19th Street,NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 703-798-3109
Fax: 480-275-3554
E-mail: Karen@hintoncommunications.com


Related Reports:

Judge Rules That Filmmaker Must Give Footage to Chevron



A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday granted a petition by Chevron to issue a subpoena for hundreds of hours of footage from a documentary about the pollution of the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador and the oil company’s involvement.




Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Chevron continues to use desperate tactics to escape $18 Billion Court Judgment

Alex Thorne: Husband of Chevron Employee Poses as “Journalist” to Undermine Environmental Group Critical of Oil Giant’s Ecuador Catastrophe

Oil Giant Continues To Use Cover of Independent Journalism To Escape $18 Billion Court Judgment


Amazon Defense Coalition

30 May 2011 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


San Francisco, CA – Alex Thorne, the husband of a senior-level Chevron employee, has been posing as an independent “journalist” to send e-mails designed to intimidate funders of a small environmental organization that has been critical of Chevron’s management for refusing to pay the company’s court-ordered $18 billion liability in Ecuador.

The stunning revelation about Thorne’s e-mails comes just days after several large Chevron shareholders blasted Chevron CEO John Watson for displaying "poor judgment" in Ecuador which “has led investors to question whether [Chevron’s] leadership can properly manage the array of environmental challenges and risks that it faces. The investors critical of Watson manage a combined $156 billion in assets and include New York’s pension fund, the nation’s third largest.

Thorne recently sent e-mails to several funders of the U.S.-based environmental group Amazon Watch in which he claimed to be working on an “article” for a publication he refused to specify. The e-mails then asked the funders “if it is time” to “reevaluate” their support for Amazon Watch in light of Chevron’s oft-criticized claim that the 18-year legal case is part of an extortion racket.

Thorne is married to Kristen Thorne, Chevron’s senior policy advisor on environment and energy issues. Alex Thorne did not disclose in the emails to Amazon Watch’s funders that he is married to a high-level Chevron employee or that he has operated a pro-Chevron website critical of the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit.

“Alex Thorne’s phony emails are part of Chevron’s Karl Rove-style campaign designed to intimidate American citizens who are trying to hold Chevron accountable for committing environmental crimes and fraud in Ecuador,” said Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the Ecuadorian communities who brought the lawsuit.

In one email to the Moriah Fund, which was forwarded to Amazon Watch, Alex Thorne says: “I’m writing an article highlighting Amazon Watch’s top donors which will include mentioning the Moriah Fund… My article highlights organizations such as yours and questions whether it is time to reevaluate your support for Amazon Watch.”


When confronted by telephone about his phony emails, Thorne confirmed to Hinton he had written them and said: “I am just a bored, stay-at-home Dad with nothing better to do.”

Representatives of the Amazon communities have long charged that Chevron committed environmental crimes in Ecuador and that its “extortion” claim is nothing more than a last-ditch ploy to mislead shareholders. Two Chevron employees are currently under criminal indictment in Ecuador for lying about the results of a purported environmental cleanup that the plaintiffs say was a clear case of fraud.

Amazon Watch, which is based in San Francisco near Chevron headquarters, has a handful of staff members and a $950,000 annual budget. In contrast, Chevron has 62,000 employees and grossed $204 billion last year, or an amount roughly 200,000 times more than Amazon Watch’s annual expenditures.

Despite their lack of resources, Amazon Watch’s staff members have had an outsized impact on Chevron. They have infuriated Chevron’s management by filing complaints against the oil giant with the Securities and Exchange Commission, by confronting the company’s Board of Directors during shareholder meetings, and by organizing protests outside the luxurious home of Chevron CEO Watson.

Just last week at Chevron’s annual meeting, Amazon Watch Executive Director Atossa Soltani accused Watson of having a personal conflict of interest over the Ecuador issue while several Chevron Board members looked on in stunned silence.

Along with lawyers for the Ecuadorians, Amazon Watch also has raised the possibility that Chevron violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Ecuador (the FCPA prohibits the bribing of foreign officials). Some of Chevron’s potential FCPA violations – which would expose the company to criminal liability in the U.S. -- have been summarized in the sworn affidavit of Ecuador attorney Juan Pablo Saenz, available here.


Chevron’s larger problem is that an Ecuador court in February imposed a cleanup tab of $18 billion for the deliberate discharge of billions of gallons of toxic waste into streams and rivers of the Amazon rainforest, where the company operated (via predecessor company Texaco) from 1964 to 1992. Chevron’s substandard operational practices in Ecuador – admitted to by the company at trial -- decimated indigenous groups and caused an outbreak of cancer and other oil-related diseases that will haunt tens of thousands of people for decades without a comprehensive remediation, according to evidence submitted by the plaintiffs.

For most of 2009, Alex Thorne maintained a website where he regularly attacked the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit and Hinton.

After Hinton wrote in a press release about his wife’s participation in a “green technology” panel discussion that failed to mention Chevron’s environmental disaster in Ecuador, Alex Thorne created a separate website called “Hinton Communications Watch” that was designed to intimidate Hinton into stopping her work for the Ecuadorian indigenous communities, said Hinton. Alex Thorne later took down the websites and at the time apologized to Hinton.

This is not Chevron’s first attempt to use the image of independent journalists as cover for its campaign to undermine the legal claims of the impoverished Ecuadorian communities, said Hinton.

Last year, Chevron was caught trying to pay American free lance journalist Mary Cudahee $20,000 to spy on the plaintiffs in Ecuador by pretending she was conducting research for an article. Cudahee exposed the effort in The Atlantic.

In 2009, just days before a 60 Minutes segment critical of Chevron’s misconduct in Ecuador was slated to air, the company posted on the internet a pro-Chevron corporate video on Ecuador narrated by former CNN correspondent Gene Randall that was designed to look like a legitimate news broadcast. Chevron hid its role in paying for the production of Randall’s video until it was exposed by The New York Times.

Nor is Chevron shy about pushing the envelope when trying to intimidate its many vocal critics on the Ecuador issue.

Chevron CEO Watson ordered the arrest of five shareholder critics at the company’s 2010 annual meeting; Chevron took out newspaper advertisements attacking the U.S.-based Goldman Foundation for awarding its prestigious environmental prize to advocates for the Ecuadorian victims of Chevron’s human rights abuses; and Chevron recently filed a racketeering lawsuit in the U.S. federal court against 47 Ecuadorian villagers and their lawyers that named Amazon Watch as a “co-conspirator”.

Hinton noted that Chevron uses CRC Public Relations, which is known for launching vicious attacks against critics of its corporate and political clients. CRC, which has close ties to the right wing of the Republican Party, is infamous for designing the Swift Boat attacks ads that targeted 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.

CRC is one of at least six public relations firms and four corporate law firms used by Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate to deal with negative fallout from the Ecuador judgment, apparently the largest environmental liability in history other than the BP Gulf spill, said Hinton. Pate is a former high-level political appointee in the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush and the mastermind of Chevron’s Ecuador litigation strategy, she added.

A Chevron spokesman recently said Chevron will not pay the Ecuador judgment and that the company plans to fight the Ecuadorian indigenous communities “until hell freezes over.”


#

Contact:
Karen Hinton
Hinton Communications
1215 19th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Karen@hintoncommunications.com
703-798-3109, cellular
480-275-3554, fax by email

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Friday, May 27, 2011

Dinapoli To Chevron: Resolve Amazon Lawsuit

FOR RELEASE:
Immediately
May 25, 2011



DiNAPOLI TO CHEVRON: RESOLVE AMAZON LAWSUIT
Standoff on Poor Ecological Record Bad for Business




New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and a coalition of investors today released a letter to oil giant Chevron urging the company to settle its 20-year legal battle with indigenous populations in the Amazon rainforest. The long-running court case alleges that Texaco, which merged with Chevron 10 years ago, destroyed huge tracts of the rainforest by dumping billions of gallons of oil waste products over several decades. Citing the “grave reputational damage” Chevron has suffered due to the lawsuit, DiNapoli and other investors called on the company to promptly negotiate a reasonable settlement to prevent further shareholder damage.

“It’s time for Chevron to face reality,” said DiNapoli, trustee of the $140.6 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund (Fund), which owns 7.5 million Chevron shares worth an estimated $780 million. “The effects of this horrific, uncontrolled pollution of the Amazon rainforest are still being felt today. Investors don’t derive any benefit from this never-ending courtroom drama.

“The entire case is looming like a hammer over shareholders’ heads. Chevron should start fresh with a new approach that embraces environmental responsibility and risk management as part of its corporate culture. More legal proceedings will only delay the inevitable.”

For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1964, Texaco and its joint venture partner Petroecuador dumped nearly 16 billion gallons of oil waste products into the Amazon rainforest. The two companies also spilled nearly 17 million gallons of oil from their trans-Ecuadorian pipeline operation between 1971 and 1991 —50 percent more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez crash.

In a letter sent in November 2008, DiNapoli called on Chevron’s board of directors to come to an equitable settlement in order to avoid substantial penalties in an Ecuadorian court. Chevron refused to negotiate, and in February, 2011 the Ecuadorian Provincial Court awarded plaintiffs nearly $18 billion in compensatory and punitive damages. The Ecuadorian court judgment is the second-largest of its kind, topped only by BP’s $20 billion fund established to settle claims stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. DiNapoli is co-lead plaintiff in an ongoing class action lawsuit filed against BP last year.

In an effort to improve Chevron’s environmental policies, DiNapoli has co-sponsored a proposal calling for the appointment an independent board director with a high level of environmental expertise. Shareholders are expected to vote on the resolution at Chevron’s annual meeting today (May 25).

Follow us on Twitter: @NYSComptroller


CONTACT: Olayinka Fadahunsi, OFadahunsi@osc.state.ny.us
(212) 681-4840