Donny Rico Episode #3: Legal Tender (Chevron legal "thuggery" against Ecuadorians)

Watch the entire Donny Rico series here: http://amwt.ch/3627

Episode #3 in the Adventures of Donny Rico (and Chevron): How to Pollute the Amazon and Get Away wit' it! "Legal Tender"

To draw attention to Chevron's threat to open society and freedom of speech Amazon Watch presents The Adventures of "Donny Rico".

(see Episode #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be9XncS8tiA and Episode #2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_kAifa3q4c)

Read more on the Eye On The Amazon: http://amazonwatch.org/news/2014/0624-legal-tender

Episode 3 focuses on the unethical and underhanded tactics of Chevron's key law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in their RICO suit against the own victims in Ecuador.

Chevron hired a law firm willing to throw ethics to the wind and take extraordinary steps to concoct a story of Chevron as the actual VICTIM of a conspiracy. Just imagine what it would take to try to turn the tables after Chevron had ADMITTED to dumping toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest.

This is the same firm the Montana Supreme Court blasted for using "legal thuggery" and "blatant and malicious intimidation" tactics while another U.S. federal judge said the firm maintained "a culture [of] obstruction and gamesmanship."

Gibson Dunn is quite open about using a template to defend its high-profile corporate clients who are losing legal cases or are trapped in scandal. It does this by targeting the lawyers or witnesses who held their clients accountable with character assassination and defamation campaigns.

Gibson Dunn masterminded a strategy where a single U.S. judge with more arrogance than Dick Cheney re-litigated the eight-year Ecuador trial in his courtroom in what can only be described as a Kafkaesque proceeding. The judge refused to consider the Ecuador trial record, the 64,000 chemical samplings results that proved Chevron committed a massive environmental crime, or the Supreme Court decision that already considered Chevron's complaints and rejected them.

How did Chevron and Gibson Dunn get it done? First they spent years trying to create dirt and get it to stick. They mounted racist attacks on Ecuador, hired PR firms and bloggers to attack the Ecuadorian communities, Ecuador's legal system, and of course the lawyers, activists, human rights defenders or allies supporting them. They launched "sting" operations, attempted to entrap judges, hid information about contamination from the court and turned a straightforward case into what is probably the most abusively litigated nightmare in the history of world jurisprudence.

Chevron and Gibson Dunn filed dozens of discovery lawsuits across the US and racked up over $36 million in legal fees. They tried to find any court that would hear their trumped up allegations. Many rejected them and one federal appellate court in Philadelphia reversed a discovery order stating "[t]he circumstances supporting [Chevron's] claim of fraud largely are allegations and allegations are not factual findings." The appeals court further chastised Chevron's attacks on the Ecuador courts as "disparaging". Some judges dismissed the firm's legal attacks under laws designed to fight "SLAPPs" -- Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, i.e. intimidation suits -- while others ordered Gibson Dunn to pay fees to its adversary and other sanctions.

One could write hundred of pages detailing Gibson Dunn's dirty tactics. As Donny mentions, Gibson Dunn's lead lawyer Randy Mastro personally met in Chicago with Chevron's key witness -- disgraced ex-judge Guerra -- to negotiate the exchange of huge sums of money and other benefits in exchange for his "factual" testimony. They also doctored video evidence and possibly engaged in fraud on the Ecuador court by failing to disclose that its technicians were ordered to hide dirty soil samples.

Donny RICO clearly has more to share about the unprecedented attack on justice waged by Chevron and Gibson Dunn. Stay tuned for Episode 4 coming soon!

Видео Donny Rico Episode #3: Legal Tender (Chevron legal "thuggery" against Ecuadorians) канала AmazonWatch