How Big Oil Is Waging ‘Lawfare’ Against Climate Activists
Oil giant Chevron's campaign against environmentalist lawyer Steven Donziger exposes corporate polluters' latest strategy for fighting climate activists – lock them up.
Chevron's campaign against Steven Donziger has resulted in more than 700 days of house arrest. (Credit: Concerned Scientists Against Climate Change)
Several weeks ago, human rights lawyer and environmental justice campaigner Steven Donziger left a Manhattan courthouse and returned to his apartment, where he has been under house arrest for over 700 days as part of a prosecution that has defied all legal norms. On 26 July, Donziger was convicted of contempt of court. His prosecution, egged on by an oil conglomerate, has devastating consequences for environmental activists.
It is no secret that Chevron, the second largest polluter on earth, has engaged in environmental destruction across the globe. From greenwashing their monumental carbon footprint to spilling oil into the San Francisco Bay earlier this year, they have cemented their status as one of the primary contributors to the growing climate crisis. But the sustained and deadly pollution of natural lands in Ecuador, as well as their refusal to clean up, is perhaps their greatest crime.
US oil giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2000, wreaked environmental havoc in Ecuador, causing damage so significant it has been referred to as the ‘Amazon Chernobyl‘. Following a deal with the Ecuadorian government in 1964, Texaco engaged in a programme of intensive oil drilling, without environmental regulation or concern for the protection of land.
Over a period of forty years, toxic and contaminated water was flooded into unlined pits in the Ecuadorian rainforest, tainting water supplies and destroying crops. Texaco themselves admitted dumping 15.8 billion gallons of this waste across the country, destroying local communities and their resources. The only clean-up efforts involved employing Indigenous people to clean these dangerous pits, with little to no protection from the contaminated waste water.
The pollution brought disease and destruction to the Ecuadorian people, with high rates of cancer and illness caused by contaminated drinking sources as well as high rates of miscarriages and birth deformities. Families told of their devastation at losing their loved ones. One activist, Emergildo Criollo of the Cofán tribe, recounted in the 2009 documentary Crude how he had lost both his young sons after they drank contaminated river water. Another told of her inability to pay for her young daughter’s cancer treatment, likely caused by the pollution.
Chevron has consistently refused to take responsibility for this damage, claiming that they had already played their part in the clean-up and that the Ecuadorian government was responsible for rectifying the damage. However, after visiting Ecuador in 1991 and witnessing the horror inflicted there, Steven Donziger and a team of lawyers launched a class-action lawsuit representing 30,000 Ecuadorians, most of the Indigenous campesinos, demanding damages for the destruction in the Lago Agrio region.
In 2011, an Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to clean up their pollution and sent them a monumental damages bill of $9 billion, in a ruling upheld by three appellate courts. This was a historic victory for the people of Ecuador and Donziger’s team – the largest ever environmental damages award had been brought against a powerful multinational. However, Chevron refused to pay, moved assets out of the country, and immediately began a costly campaign of judicial harassment to undermine the ruling, with Donziger as the primary target.
‘Nothing Like This Has Ever Happened Before in the American Legal System’
Chevron first brought charges against Donziger in 2011, filing a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO) charge in a New York court, claiming that Donziger had bribed a judge in the Ecuadorian verdict. Chevron’s case lacked evidence and relied mostly on witness testimony from former judge, Alberto Guerra. Guerra’s reliability as a witness has been questioned, as it has been revealed that he and Chevron forged a significant financial relationship, with the oil giant paying his monthly expenses and for an immigration lawyer to secure his family’s relocation to the United States. Chevron also rehearsed Guerra’s testimony with him fifty-three times before trial. However, Guerra admitted to an international tribunal in 2015 that his witness testimony contained statements that were false or exaggerated.
Despite little evidence and the Chevron-coached key witness admitting that he lied, Donziger was convicted by Judge Lewis Kaplan. However, the campaign against Donziger did not stop. A further charge arose when Donziger refused to hand over his mobile phone and computer to a judge during an appeal of the RICO verdict, on the grounds that this would violate the attorney-client privilege that helped bring Chevron to justice. In response, Donziger was charged with six counts of contempt of court and a judge, Loretta Preska, was assigned to the case.
From the beginning, this trial was set to convict Steven Donziger. When the Southern District Court of New York refused to prosecute Donziger, Kaplan, in a legal rarity, chose to appoint a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute him. Seward & Kissel have represented Chevron as recently as 2018 and have links to the oil and gas industry.
Loretta Preska, the judge assigned to the case, is not only a well-known conservative judge but a member of the right-wing Chevron-funded Federalist Society. Preska chose to deny Donziger a jury of his peers, and in August 2019 placed him under house arrest where he has remained for over 700 days with his wife and son, disbarred and unable to work. There is no legal precedent for this egregiously harsh treatment: not a single lawyer in US history has been detained for even one day pre-trial on a contempt charge. Donziger’s treatment defies the principles of justice.
One Law For Them
When his trial began in 2021, after numerous delays due to Covid-19, the rot of corruption began to show. Describing the process as a ‘charade‘ and backed by celebrities, activists, and lawyers across the globe, Donziger chose not to testify on his own behalf, given the legal extremities imposed by Preska. Throughout the trial, Preska denied access to the courtroom, keeping the trial private; earlier in the year the judge had blocked several members of Donziger’s team from representing him. It is even alleged that she read a newspaper in court during the trial, at ease with her contempt for a fair and just process.
The renowned lawyer Martin Garbus, who represented Nelson Mandela and Cesar Chavez, represented Donziger at his latest trial, recalling his shock at the flagrant violation of legal precedent: ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before in the American legal system.’
The charges against Steven Donziger have been condemned by hundreds of lawyers, legal advocates, politicians, environmental justice advocates and Nobel laureates across the globe. Students from over fifty-two law schools have engaged in a boycott of Seward & Kissel, citing a conflict of interest. Most recently, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and other members of Congress have called for a review into the case. Even celebrities such as Susan Sarandon and Roger Waters have backed Donziger’s campaign and led rallies outside his New York apartment where he has been imprisoned. However, public support could not rust the cogs of a corrupted judicial system and earlier this month, Donziger was found guilty of contempt of court. He is yet to be sentenced. Upon delivering her verdict, Judge Preska spoke with an ominous tone: ‘It’s time to pay the piper.’
Preka’s warning should terrify environmental activists everywhere. Her words represent a tangible shift towards corporate prosecutions within the legal system and impunity for those who pollute and poison. Though it is clear that the climate crisis is being accelerated by corporations, the Donziger verdict has established a dangerous new precedent for the active criminalisation of anyone who dares to challenge the most powerful companies on earth.
Hiding behind a thin veil of social responsibility and ‘greenwashing’ public campaigns, Chevron and other mass polluters have quietly recognised the importance of locking people like Donziger away. They have spent an astronomical £2 billion bringing charges against him, with the knowledge that accepting the Ecuadorian verdict as valid would bring a rapid end to their reign of ecological terrorism. Whilst Donziger now faces jail time at the behest of Chevron, the people of Ecuador still face dangerous pollution, disease, and devastation of their natural lands.
For socialists and environmental activists everywhere, Donziger’s prosecution is a sign that large corporations have the power to bend the law and silence anyone who stands up to their environmental destruction. Climate activists must therefore work to build a movement that demands a justice system that lives up to the name.