Legal News

Lawyers continue to question the Chevron way

By Richard Binder

Civil rights lawyers, who accused Chevron Corp. of human rights abuses in Nigeria for a decade only to lose a jury verdict in December, now accuse the oil giant of trying to scare off future civil rights cases by seeking $485,000 in court costs from the Nigerians.

"Given the extreme poverty of the plaintiffs, of which Chevron is well aware, Chevron certainly cannot be operating under the impression that it will actually recover this huge sum from them," wrote Cindy Cohn, attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, representing the plaintiffs.

"Instead it seems likely that the goal of the cost bill is the chilling effect of imposing substantial costs on future litigants," she wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on March 11.

Chevron responded through its attorney Robert Mittelstaedt of Jones Day's office in San Francisco. "Chevron is exercising its right to seek to recover a portion of the costs it was forced to incur during 10 years of litigation," he said. "Further comment would be inappropriate while the matter is pending before the court."

Read the full story at NLJ.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on March 13, 2009 (boomark / email).