▲ 347 points
back
162 comments
Its important to be reminded regularly that there are perfectly legal ways for people with lots of money to endlessly bully people that annoy them. These people/companies have lawyers on retainer that they're already paying so its essentially free for them to file bogus suits and motions to cause havoc in your life. What are you going to do? Sue them back? Thats the world they live in, and its a world that as a small time person or corporation you can not win in (long term).
Look at Gawker and Peter Thiel--no matter how you feel personally about what they did, what they published about him was absolutely legal. As a background task his lawyers destroyed that company by keeping them tied up in court cases and funding any one with an axe to grind against them until they were gone.
My mom was an attorney. A really sound piece of advice she gave me was, "Never get into a legal battle with a lawyer. You can't win." What she was saying was that an attorney can essentially sue you for free. (Ok not totally free but you get the point). They can tie you up in legal battles and force you to just waste money on something that is seemingly trivial. The same advice goes for someone who can spend large sums of money and not worry about the consequences.
There is this great scene in the movie "From The Hip" where the CEO of a bank assaulted another individual. The scene is his lawyer saying he thinks they can win the case. The CEO responds essentially with "You can't win. I hit him. Just make the case last 3 days so he has to spend more money." That pretty much sums up being rich and the power those people wield.
Gawker deserved someone to come after then as Thiel did, for what they did to him, Hulk Hogan and others
I agree with you up to a point.
However there are real limits to what the rich and powerful can do before the peasants revolt. The current American Elites have completely forgotten the concept of "noblesse oblige" and I believe we are currently seeing the start of a peasant rebellion.
It starts with rejection of the mainstream media, academics, and other "experts".
In the case of Peter Thiel, he is extremely hated among emerging factions of the radical left and dissident right.
Based on this summary of the Gawker/Thiel story, it seems like they mostly brought it upon themselves: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/56kz4d/til_t....
One more mechanism by which those at the top can reinforce their position.
So why does the US justice system allow this? It's occupying the whole legal system with time wasters.
I'm glad I don't work in legal, it sounds so drawn out and boring.
I opened up the article mildly curious about which internet personality was about to make the outlandish claim to the biggest victim crown for internet clicks.
I'm heartbroken it was Steven Danziger, they guy that took on big oil, gave them a black eye, and went to (house) jail for it.
Even though his case is one I've followed for years, it even escaped my own memory.
Also, someone mentioned Snowden and Arrange. for comparison. Although they can be thought as same, remember these two, unlike Danziger, took on the govt, the intelligence apparatus, and its guns. They should have known full well that when you play high stakes poker you are risking a ton.
Danziger OTOH, was taking on a private corporation. His case is big, but no too different in scope than say Erin Brokovich's case against PG&E & Hinkley(2), or Jan Schlittchmanns case vs WR Grace and Beatrice Foods(1). The plaintiff counsels won in both cases, without consequences to their life or careers.
Arrange and Snowden were morally righteous however they probably knew the size of the sacrifice they were about to make and made the decision to proceed anyway. I doubt Danziger had any idea that what he was getting into would cost him his career.
(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_v._Cryovac,_Inc.
(2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_groundwater_contamin...
It should be noted that a significant difference between Steven Danziger and Erin Brokovich is that he took on a US energy corporation which was acting against non-US citizens.
The US state apparatus clearly considers that US corporate economic interests far outweigh any rights non-US citizens have, especially outside the USA, and doubly especially in South America, and are thus more than willing to provide any kind of assistance that helps those economic interests - up to and including military aid in the past (for example, the infamous banana republics).
Taking on a US corporation harming people outside the USA (especially if you have the gall of winning!) is seen as a slight on the USA itself, and is punished as much as possible. It's important to the US state department that people are taught not to take such a task on lightly. I'm surprised there weren't bigger repercussions for the foreign judges who tried the case as well.
Also remember another person who took on a large, well-connected corporation, Karen Silkwood [0], and ultimately lost her life under suspicious circumstances.
Erin Brokovich's case against PG&E & Hinkley(2), or Jan Schlittchmanns case vs WR Grace and Beatrice Foods
Are these exceptions? I wonder how many individuals (without money) have taken on mega corporations only to have their lives destroyed by the mega corps (legally)?
I am just speculating here, but my guess is that everyone knows about cases like Brokovich vs PG&E because the little guy won and because of the size of the settlement (and the movie helps too). For every case that small guys win, there must be many many more cases that they lose, even though they are on the right?
you mean Julian Assange? looks like your Autocorrect messed it up lmao
It's worth noting that there is another side to the story. As Wikipedia notes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger), significant evidence of Donziger's fraud ended up being captured by a friendly documentary crew that had been following him around.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague found that the evidence placed before the Court was "the most thorough documentary, video, and testimonial proof of fraud ever put before an arbitral tribunal", and that [Donziger] did engage in blackmail and bribery of Ecuadorian judges.
The situation is complex, and I certainly don't have any insight into the true rights and wrongs of the case. And there's certainly evidence that points towards Donziger's innocence too. But Esquire's take is, I think, entirely unbalanced, and discounts out of hand the idea that any of the many, many court cases Donziger has lost (in multiple legal systems and in front of multiple judges) may have been at all correct.
They're misdemeanor charges, though. I don't believe he was criminally charged in the US for the (alleged) fraud/bribery, only for contempt because he refused to produce documents as ordered by the court. Regardless of the evidence for or against his alleged past actions it's excessive to confine him to house arrest for 18 months when the maximum sentence for the charges, if proven, is just six months.
> significant evidence of Donziger's fraud ended up being captured by a friendly documentary crew that had been following him around.
I don't think thats a correct reading of the judgement at all. The "most thorough documentary" is the court referring to itself in the amount of data (i.e. documents) that it accumulates to show that it's improbable for the Ecuadorian judge to have written the initial decision (against chevron).
> many court cases Donziger has lost
Tthose court cases generally explicitly say they're not deciding if Chrevron broke any laws. They're generally pretty explicit in that they don't think Donziger won "correctly". i.e. with the PCA the PCA isn't saying that Chrevron didn't litter, they're saying we think the decision by initial judge was done improperly (i.e. it was ghost written).
[1]: https://pcacases.com/web/sendAttach/2453 > (4) The ‘Ghostwriting’ of the Lago Agrio Judgment: The facts established on the factual, expert and forensic evidence speak for themselves, as set out at length in Parts IV, V and VI above. 8.54 As there explained, the details as to how exactly all or material parts of the Lago Agrio Judgment came to be written, corruptly by certain of the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs’ representatives for Judge Zambrano, remain incomplete. The missing factual and forensic evidence is likely available only in Ecuador, if it still exists at all. Yet the circumstantial and other evidence adduced in this arbitration is overwhelming. Short of a signed confession by the miscreants, as rightly submitted by the Claimants at the end of the Track II Hearing, the evidence establishing ‘ghostwriting’ in this arbitration “must be the most thorough documentary, video, and testimonial proof of fraud ever put before an arbitral tribunal.”31
The article specifically pointed out that the fraud charges are based on a single accusation of a former Ecuadoran judge whom Chevron moved him & his family to the United States, paid his income taxes, and had their lawyers coach him for 53 days.
He since recanted his false testimony.
Even if there is actually some kind of wrongdoing on Donziger's side, the blatant multi-million dollar effort to discredit him and blatantly ignore the law on Chevron's part so taints any such evidence that it should be considered worthless.
The "both-sidesing" it as you are doing, you very nicely demonstrate how it's so easy to fall into the trap of being "fair" but actually siding with the wrongdoer.
"Significant evidence of Donziger's Fraud" seems to only be backed up by the following line from the article you cite:
> showed an environmental scientist present at a legal strategy meeting of plaintiffs' lawyers; the same scientist was later appointed by the Ecuadorian court as an ostensibly impartial expert to write a report on technical issue
So the evidence shows that one scientific expert wasn't fully independent.
Contrast this with the clear evidence of conflicts of interests from the US judges, the bribing of the oil company's star witness and their eventual recantation of some of their testimony.
It sure looks like there's far more evidence of fraud from Chevron than whatever the documentary crew caught.
Yes, there’s definitely a lot more to the story than what is described in the article, or indeed most of the articles that are based primarily on interviews with Donziger. It’s hard to find a single element of the case that hasn’t been the subject of fierce controversy. The arbitration decision you referenced [1] also relied heavily on disputed evidence, but they tended to give it credence anyway. I don’t think it’s very controversial that Judge Lewis Kaplan has been remarkably hostile toward Donziger, just depends on whether you believe Donziger deserves the harsh treatment. I think it would help if the case got a proper review from a cooler headed judge, but with the current trajectory of the US judicial system that seems to be impossible.
[1] https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/stories/documents/in..., especially part IV where the use of Guerra’s testimony is explained on page 139 of the PDF.
Donziger did some bad things. That's mostly indisputable, although it's questionable how much control an American lawyer had over a team of Ecuadorians operating in Ecuador. But the sanctions carried out against him were an atrocious breach of ordinary legal procedures.
Just because someone's moral character isn't perfect doesn't mean their legal rights disappear. John Adams would be horrified.
He was released on April 25, 2022. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/4/26/steven_donziger_freed...
Released after being held several times over the maximum allowed limit, and they took his law license away.
The judge responsible should be disbarred.
The judges need to be jailed. There was a time when tarring/feathering was an acceptable practice too.
Needs to be brought back for cases like this, where the legal system itself acts as the coercive agent of some rich corporation.
When I look at how figures like Donziger, Assange and Snowden are treated I cant help but think our society is a lot more like Russia than we think we are - differing mostly by a matter of degree, rather than principle.
Furthermore, this is a geopolitical risk. If the west doesnt uphold the principles we purport to represent then our support dwindles and allies who were on the fence will fall against us.
We in the US definitely live in a soft totalitarian system. Like totalitarianism but with heated leather seats if you can afford them.
When I look at how figures like Donziger, Assange and Snowden are treated I cant help but think our society is a lot more like Russia than we think we are - differing mostly by a matter of degree, rather than principle.
Stalinism was economic totalitarianism with a goal and an exit strategy. Authoritarianism was supposed to be a phase; the system would moderate itself over time. The degree to which that would have actually happened, we don't know. External forces destroyed the Soviet Union, so all we can do is speculate, but I suspect that if it had been left alone, it'd have fixed a lot of its problems and be a decent place to live by now.
The corporate system we have now is also economic totalitarianism. Financial interests decide where you can live, what jobs you can do, and what kind of reputation you have in the community. The issue here is that it's economic totalitarianism with no exit strategy. Neoliberalism insists that things have never been better (despite substantial evidence to the contrary) and there's no reason to exit from economic totalitarianism when we should, instead, "own nothing, have no privacy, and be happy".
I don't know why you're being downvoted, but I agree, the more a whisleblower brings to light the more they are treated as a traitor.
Who's the "we" you speak of? The "we're barely any better than them" or "we're just like them but with better optics" sentiment you profess is one of the common ones to find around here.
If you wanna play that dumb "zoom out until everything looks the same" game then all societies are like Russia. Would there even have been a media article written about this guy had this story been in Russia?
The caveman were almost certainly treating the guy who rocked the boat worse than the guy who didn't. Every society plays favorites to some extent. There's a lot of noise in the data when it comes to how much due process these kinds of "inconvenient to the rulers" people get in modern democracies so any nation can be made to look like Russia depending on who you pick and choose. The lawyer in question looks like he really got unjustifiably screwed but equally "inconvenient to the people on top" people have been left relatively alone in the past.
Given the choice, I'd still much rather live under the jurisdiction of the U.S. than Russia. The U.S. is far from perfect, but I'll choose her over Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. any day.
I understand it sucks to hear that people are mistreated, but at least you do hear about it.
This story is scary and heartbreaking. The guy represented poor people in a foreign country against brutal corporation and now his life and career are ruined
And there's an obviously corrupt judge "on the loose", posing a credible threat that keeps who-knows-what-other abuses from ever being brought to light.
His career is still active and he is out of jail now so his life is back on track too. And his imprisonment brought far more attention to his cause than he had before.
House arrest was a miscarriage of justice and bad, but it was during Covid when everyone was basically house arrested.
While what happened seems wrong based on the article, it's clearly not the "most vicious corporate counterattack in US history." No Pinkertons, no machine guns, no families.
At the end of the day (or house arrest) this is all still legal maneuvering. It may be vicious within that context but there are much bigger and sometimes nastier contexts out there.
The context in the Wikipedia article seems a lot more favorable to Chevron[0] than the Esquire article. I know, I know, NPOV and all that is Wikipedia's MO. But everyone here seems to be thinking that all companies have a magic "put person in prison" button on their desk. While I do have very many complaints about the civil legal system this isn't exactly what happened.
What it seems to me is that the legal system has a blind spot: they are very much obsessed with jurisdiction and ethics rules, but don't know what to do when those are in conflict. What happens when you insist that the only venue for a case is one that demands bribes and does not try cases impartially? Chevron seems to think that Ecuadorian corruption meant they were above the law - it's the same logic as the Idaho Zone of Death[1]. Donziger figured that if he's being told to try the case there by an American judge, than it's OK to pay the bribes necessary to get the ruling he wants.
The only reason why that even seems remotely OK is purely a function of how dirty and awful oil companies are. Had this happened to almost anyone else the countersuit on Donziger would have been considered to be a moral imperative. If a lawyer bribed a judge in another country to get a quick judgment on, say, a bakery or something, we'd be up in arms and wanting to see that lawyer behind bars. So perhaps this is a new benchmark for unsympathetic plaintiffs somehow. You are such a bad person that we don't care if you got extorted by a dirty judge-bribing lawyer.
That's, of course, assuming the judge-bribing happened. The person who delivered the testimony has been rather unreliable about this; and has recanted and un-recanted his testimony multiple times. I don't necessarily treat this as evidence that nothing happened and that he made it up. It's entirely possible that this guy just plays up all sides for himself. He could have taken a bribe from Donziger, then "protection from Ecuador" from Chevron, and then more money or favors from the other international tribunals he testified at later. That doesn't exonerate Donziger, it just implicates Chevron, too.
The ultimate take-away here is that the legal system has tunnel vision and is easy to distract. Allegations of unethical conduct by lawyers is enough of an internal threat to the functioning of the courts that they will forget the original crime in favor of circling the wagons. Scumbag lawyers like Chevron's legal team know that they can gin up an ethics trial to get out of their own misconduct.
[0] Or at least, as favorable as you can get for a company that dumped oil on indigenous peoples
[1] A small strip of Yosemite National Park in Idaho where it is constitutionally impossible to empanel a jury for criminal proceedings because Congress demanded it be treated as part of a Wyoming judicial district
A very nice explanation on a functioning democracy.
And of course Ecuador is just another vasal state.
Outsourcing violence to the state is probably the single biggest source of suffering in modern society.
Until I read Hobbes in my late 20s I couldn't see further. Give
Leviathan a go. I suggest an easy way in is to listen to these
lectures on Political Philosophy by prof. Steven B. Smith [2].
Now, Hobbes and Rousseau are flawed thinkers, but the gist of "social contract" theory still constitutes the foundation of the modern nations state, whether republic, parliamentary or monarchy.
The failure, as an earlier commenter pointed out to be a "geopolitical risk" is when we don't uphold our own principles. the Rule of Law that we in the "west" are so (rightfully) proud of must therefore be as brutal against the rich and powerful as against the poor.
Without that example to assuage the middle classes everything gravitates to two poles, those with everything to lose and those with nothing to lose. Hobbes rightly feared those with nothing to lose much more (being an aristocrat's teacher at a time of civil war) and seeing all the fancy lawyers and money in the world won't do you any good against a hungry peasant with a rifle and nothing left to protect, so the state must treat the rich and poor as equals.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)
[2] https://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-114/lecture-1
I have no means of checking the veracity of this article, but it certainly paints that Kaplan judge as a corrupt crook.
Is there anything the general public can do to help? Like, write to a congressman or something?
The real shameful here are the those judges. Those greedy, corrupt, soul-less judges.
Oil is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. Change my mind.
[2021]
This kind of stuff happens more often than people want to admit. For example, I have discovered that I have no constitutional right to a trial or due process. A multi year long Federal investigation was done based on a false accusation. My career and everything was taken. I have never been charged with anything and it is implied that there is no crime to even charge me with. I have taken all of this to Twitter recently (link in my profile). The past few weeks I have been asking the state and federal to arrest me, even though I didnt do anything, just so I would have a right to an attorney to be honored and begin the process of defending myself. But they havent even replied now for months.
Good luck out there when you run up against real power structures. You do not have the rights you think you do.
The Government can and will kill you without even charging you or proving anything to a jury.
This isnt even political as both left and right wing controlled states, CO and TN have gone along with it.
We simply do not have any rights in the U.S. Truth seems to be based simply on how many political connections and how much money you have.
While the atrocities committed by Texaco and the Ecuador government in Ecuador are heinous, Steven is a class action lawyer that was trying to line his own and his backer's pockets. I agree that Chevron and US judges appear to have crossed the line and hope that is prosecuted. But you should really research the whole story before you honor the lawyer's actions in any way. And the whole suit was frivolous anyway as the Ecuador government had already absolved Texaco/Chevron of all liability. Their own documentary was very damning even before the outtakes where revealed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvrZRvgwBS8. This guy is getting way too much mileage out of this 20+ year lawsuit and should stop representing himself as the victim.
https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/boutrous....
'"Indeed, Maria Aguinda, the lead plaintiff in the Chevron litigation, admitted that when the plaintiffs’ lawyers originally instructed her to sign the litigation papers, she thought she was signing up for free medicine: in
her own words, the lawyer told her, “In four months, I will bring medications
so you will be healed. But first, sign this paper here.”'