Litigation

Judge Kaplan, Chevron, Steven Donziger, Ecuador

By Carter Wood

Randy Mastro and his fellow Gibson Dunn attorneys have put together an excellent summary of all the games, maneuvers and machinations that U.S. trial lawyer Steven Donziger has practiced in an effort to avoid depositions by Chevron.

Donziger is the New York attorney who has directed the PR/advocacy/calumny campaign against Chevron to support the $113 billion contingency-fee suit for environmental damage in Ecuador by the company's predecessor, Texaco. Last week, the Gibson Dunn attorneys filed a memorandum of law in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to support Chevron's motion to compel Donziger to produce documents.

After a variety of delaying tactics and rejected motions to the Second Circuit, Donziger submitted a privilege log more than 2,000 pages long to claim he did not have to produce 8,562 documents. Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Donziger to appear in court today with Chevron's requested documents, adding a hand-written note: ""ORDERED that this order shall not be constructed to imply that Donziger is not already in violation of a previous order that required the production forthwith of all documents responsive to the subpoena."

The Chevron memo is a good read, and we have a fuller post on the latest judicial proceedings in the litigation at Shopfloor.org. Additional news coverage:

Full post as published by Point of Law on November 22, 2010 (boomark / email).