Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan (a Clinton appointee) in 2014 excoriated Mr. Donziger in a 485-page ruling for … The key part of today’s U.S. court decision, on pp. “We wrote this judicial complaint after studying the record in this case and coming to the conclusion that Judge Kaplan has been acting as a de facto lawyer for Chevron in this litigation. We already have reported how New York federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has been under furious criticism of late from prominent lawyers, including famed San Francisco-based attorney John Keker, for trying to mount a “show trial” in New York to help Chevron evade its $19 billion liability in Ecuador for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest. The judicial complaint follows the formation last week of a case monitoring committee comprised of a separate group of prominent lawyers that also has been critical of how judicial authorities in New York have treated Donziger. During that time, Judge Kaplan took the unprecedented step of charging him with criminal contempt for challenging the very basis of Kaplan’s own order, which turned out at least in part to be unlawful. Prominent trial lawyer John Keker called the proceedings before Kaplan a “Dickensian farce” driven by the judge’s “implacable hostility” toward Donziger. The stakes were higher for Chevron than in 2002, when it finally succeeded in moving the case to Ecuador. Ron Kuby, Donziger’s other lawyer, also praised the decision and called for the dismissal of the criminal contempt case. “It is unusual for a case in the United States to have such deep problems that a trial monitoring committee feels the need to attend,” said attorney Scott Badenoch, who helped organize the group. The court ruling was affirmed by six appellate courts in Ecuador and Canada, including the high courts of both countries. “On two occasions now, the New York federal appellate court has reversed Judge Kaplan in decisions favoring Chevron,” said Garbus. In 2011, Donziger helped Indigenous peoples win a $9.5 billion environmental judgment against Chevron after it was found to have deliberately dumped billions of gallons of oil waste in a huge of swath of Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. international@nlg.org. Donziger is now in his 13th month of home detention in a misdemeanor case where the longest sentence ever imposed on a lawyer convicted of the charge is three months of home confinement. The complaint documents what its authors say is a pattern of ethics violations committed by Judge Kaplan, a former tobacco industry lawyer. International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window), Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window), Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Compensate Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange, Global Campaign to defend Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, Independence of the judiciary in Pakistan, International Campaign in support of Chin Peng’s petition to return to Malaysia, Indigenous movement in Colombia under attack, International Commission for Labor Rights: Critical Assistance for working people and trade unions worldwide. Rather than providing Donziger with a jury of his peers, Chevron stopped pursuing the monetary damages and opted for a trial by judge with US District Judge Lewis Kaplan assigned to the case. Garbus said the decision today calls into question the entire foundation of three years of brutal civil and criminal contempt proceedings authorized by Kaplan at Chevron’s request that targeted Donziger, several supporters of the case, and Donziger’s own family members. New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan—as I’ll explain—made his corporate bias remarkably clear as he presided over Chevron’s counterattack on Donziger. “Complainants are very concerned that the persecution of Mr. Donziger by Judge Kaplan and Chevron will have a chilling effect on the work of other human rights lawyers, acting as a warning of the consequences they will suffer should they try to hold major corporations accountable for their human rights violations,” the complaint said. NEW YORK—September 1, 2020—Dozens of legal organizations around the world representing more than 500,000 lawyers along with over 200 individual lawyers today submitted a judicial complaint documenting a series of shocking violations of the judicial code of conduct by United States Judge Lewis A. Kaplan targeting human rights lawyer Steven Donziger after he helped Indigenous peoples win a historic judgment against Chevron in Ecuador to clean up the pollution caused by decades of oil drilling with no environmental controls. Kaplan presided over the first case where charges against Guantanamo captives were laid in a civilian court. However, bar referee and former federal prosecutor John Horan called for a hearing and recommended the return of Mr. Donziger’s law license. Law360 (May 17, 2021, 10:08 PM EDT) -- Steven Donziger's request to read a brief statement instead of taking the witness stand was denied. In 2011, without even hearing any evidence, Kaplan tried to block any court in the world form enforcing the Ecuador judgment. Donziger became the first person in U.S. history to be targeted in a corporate prosecution by an oil company, according to observers. Also signing the complaint are more than 200 individual lawyers, including Professors Charles Nesson and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School; Marie Toussaint, a member of the European Parliament; Sarah Leah Whitson, the former Middle East Director for Human Rights Watch; Scott Badenoch, Jr., the Co-chair of the Environmental Justice Committee of the American Bar Association; and Bill Bowring, Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London. But, five years after the district court issued the Stay Order, it found him in contempt for … doing exactly that.”. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Kaplan denied Donziger a jury, put in place a series of highly unusual courtroom tactics, severely restricted Donziger’s ability to mount a defense, and through his had picked judge to try him for criminal contempt has had him  detained him at home for more than one year on contempt charges that were rejected by the U.S. Attorney, and allowed him to be prosecuted by a private law firm that has Chevron as a client. The firm immediately pushed for Donziger’s pre-trial detention and later disclosed that Chevron was a direct client of the firm. 2010: Gibson-Dunn, on behalf of Chevron, launches an attack against the victims, their lawyers, and media, before corporate-friendly Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York. Special prosecutor Rita Glavin pulled up onscreen a May 29, 2019, order by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. “The decision is additional proof that the Chevron-orchestrated criminal contempt case against Steven is a product of a corporate retaliation campaign designed to punish Steven and intimidate all who helped hold the company accountable for its ‘Amazon Chernobyl’ disaster in Ecuador.”. He has shown a shocking pattern of escalating efforts to harm Mr. Donziger for his advocacy of the rights of indigenous people in Ecuador spanning a 10-year period,” said Jeanne Mirer, the President of the IADL. US district judge Lewis Kaplan in New York has now ruled that Steven Donziger's legal team used "corrupt means" to win the 2011 case. 2014: US District Judge Lewis Kaplan rules the decision to be tainted and accuses Donziger of perverting the course of justice. “Chevron’s strategy is death by a thousand cuts through the manipulation of a legal system it has managed to stack in its favor. Learn how your comment data is processed. With U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan as an ally, Chevron has demanded Donziger surrender his computer and cell phone for inspection by the company so that it can sue or target anybody Donziger has been in touch with, or anyone supporting the campaign for justice in Ecuador. He also imposed enormous fines on Donziger without a jury finding that have all but bankrupted him. A longtime resident of Manhattan and graduate of Harvard Law School, Donziger has received support from 55 Nobel laureates; 475 lawyers and bar associations around the world; and a slew of human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Global Witness, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and many others. In an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who … IADL was founded in Paris in 1946 to fight to uphold the rule of law around the world and has consultative status with UN agencies. Donziger faces up to six months in prison on six misdemeanor counts of contempt of court drafted not by prosecutors but by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, stemming from the lawyer’s representation of indigenous Ecuadoreans living in the oil-polluted Amazon rainforest. In another unusual move, after the U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to pursue Judge Kaplan’s contempt charges the judge appointed a private law firm, Seward & Kissel LLP—which is known for its extensive financial ties to the oil and gas industry—to prosecute Donziger in the name of the government while being paid an hourly rate by taxpayers. Parts of this testimony have since been retracted. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The current charges stem from Donziger’s refusal to turn over electronic devices to Chevron, which has been locked in a $9.5 billion battle over an environmental lawsuit that Chevron calls fraudulent. The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to pursue Donziger’s case, but U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan charged Donziger himself for contempt of court. Donziger spent more than 27 years representing Indigenous peoples and rural farmers of the Ecuadorian Rainforest in a case against Chevron and its predecessor, Texaco, for dumping more than 70 billion liters of toxic waste into the rainforest those defendants call home. Chevron lawyers coached the witness, Alberto Guerra, for 53 days before Kaplan let him testify against Donziger; Guerra later admitted under oath that he had lied repeatedly. That order was overturned the day after oral argument in a decision also written by Judge Lynch. Chevron replied by suing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging the entire judgment was based on fraud committed by Donziger … At the time, neither Kaplan nor the Seward lawyers disclosed that Chevron had recently been a client of the firm and that several of its major clients had financial ties to the company. That appeal is scheduled to be argued on Sept. 15 while Kaplan is trying to drive Donziger to trial on the contempt charges on Sept. 9, despite the fact Donziger’s lawyers cannot travel from out of town during the COVID-19 pandemic and not a single criminal trial has been held in the district since March. “The decision today proves that the underlying order, which gave rise to the criminal contempt charges, was ambiguous, creating a contempt trap for Steven Donziger,” said Kuby. The Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Robert Katzmann, has a duty to read the complaint and determine whether he will appoint a committee to investigate and issue findings. Organizations signing the complaint also include the Center for Constitutional Rights; Lawyers Committee for Human Rights; National Conference of Black Lawyers; the Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific (including lawyers from Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Pakistan); the African Bar Association, which includes lawyers from 61 nations; and the Indian Lawyers Association, among several others. An independent legal referee recommended his reinstatement in February 2020. “The violations constitute a clear breach of the norms set out in the judicial canon of ethics that govern the behavior of judges in the United States. Chevron’s legal onslaught succeeded largely because of a single federal judge in New York named Lewis A. Kap­lan. New York -- In a major rebuke to Chevron and controversial U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a New York appeals court today threw out a key contempt finding against human rights attorney Steven Donziger that had been used to fine him millions of dollars in court costs and led to criminal contempt charges that resulted in an unprecedented 19-month house arrest without trial. Donziger was suspended from practicing law in New York in July 2018 based on rulings by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in the Chevron case. Complaint signed by 37 organizations representing 500,000 lawyers worldwide details shocking violations of the code of Judicial Conduct by U.S. judge in long-running Chevron retaliation campaign, Chevron and Kaplan targeted Donziger after he helped Indigenous peoples win a landmark $9.5 billion judgment against the company in 2011 for dumping oil waste in the Amazon. By that time fed up with Donziger's refusal to provide broad financial information to Chevron, Kaplan had recently appointed a neutral forensic expert to create mirror images of Donziger's devices as well as go through his email, cloud storage and messaging accounts. The complaint is signed by an unprecedented number of legal organizations from approximately 80 countries collectively representing 500,000 lawyers. Chevron fought back in U.S. court and won. Steven Donziger speaks outside of the United States District Court in Manhattan on the last day of his trial Monday, May 17, 2021. As part of an avowed campaign to “demonize” Donziger, and despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador, Chevron came back to the United States and filed a civil “racketeering” case against the lawyer and all 47 named plaintiffs from the rainforest that potentially sought $60 billion in damages — the highest personal liability in U.S. history. More than 200 lawyers file judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan over abusive targeting of human rights advocate Steven Donziger | International Association of Democratic Lawyers More than 200 lawyers file judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan over abusive targeting of human rights advocate Steven Donziger “Steven Donziger is a great champion of human rights,” said Garbus, who has represented Daniel Ellsberg, Cesar Chavez, and Nelson Mandela in a six-decade career. The finding had been used to … 2009: Donziger testifies before Congress on Ecuador case. After the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Judge Kaplan last year filed unprecedented criminal contempt charges against Donziger after he appealed post-judgment discovery orders to turn over to Chevron his attorney-client privileged work on his computer and cell phone. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers is a Non-Governmental Organization accredited to ECOSOC and UNESCO. When faced with the opinions of hundreds of international organizations, human rights leaders, environmental justice advocates, distinguished members of the international legal community, and others in support of Steven Donziger, there seems to be only one opinion that matters to journalists – Lewis Kaplan… On February 9, 2010, Kaplan ordered Ahmed Ghailani's prosecution to review the record of Ghailani's detention in the CIA's network of black sites. The decision is also the second clear reversal of Judge Kaplan by the Second Circuit. By Ryan Boysen. Donziger was made liable for millions of dollars in Chevron’s legal costs and the company was granted seizure of his laptop and cellphone. Five pages in length with a 40-page appendix with 15 exhibits, the complaint is to be turned over to the chief judge in the federal appellate court in New York that oversees the trial court where Kaplan sits. image copyright Reuters. In March 2018, Kaplan authorized a three-year brutal campaign by Chevron of civil and criminal contempt actions targeting Donziger and his supporters that was intended to incapacitate his ability to continue to represent his clients in Ecuador. The criminal contempt case filed by Kaplan in July 2019 was rejected by the regular federal prosecutor, prompting the judge to appoint a private law firm (Seward & Kissel) to prosecute Donziger. Donziger has spent three years trying to get appellate review of Kaplan’s authorization of the Chevron discovery campaign to achieve the vindication he received today, said Garbus. 43-44, reads as follows: “Given the district court’s interpretation of the Injunction, it was not unreasonable for someone in Donziger’s position to believe that he could continue monetizing his clients’ interests in the Ecuadorian Judgment and pay himself with those proceeds because, as the district court itself noted, that is how the case “always has been financed. Because of the Kaplan decision, and lobbying by Kaplan and Gibson-Dunn lawyers, the bar grievance committee in New York suspended Mr. Donziger’s law license without a hearing. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan was still presiding over the case. After a decades-long legal battle against Chevron, which Chris Hedges details in a recent column for Scheerpost, Donziger was charged with misdemeanor civil contempt for refusing New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s orders to turn over to Chevron his client communications—which would force him to violate attorney-client privilege— his personal electronics, his passport and to cease trying to … An appeals court ruled in August 2020 that the referee had been too lenient, disbarring Donziger in New York. File #1:19-cr-00561-LAP-1 - Donziger, Steven is, to say the least, an interesting read. He ordered Donziger to turn over his computer, phone, electronic devices and passport. Six other courts rule the decision to be valid. The complaint could result in a censure of Kaplan or even his removal from the bench. Kaplan also refused to let Donziger testify on direct. 2009: Crude, film with Trudie Styler, released at Sundance, drawing widespread attention. “This is an extraordinary legal victory that should lead to the enforcement of the environmental judgment against Chevron and the dismissal of the criminal contempt case against Steven Donziger,” said legendary New York civil rights attorney Martin Garbus, who represents Donziger. According to The New York Times any materials that show the decisions "were for a purpose other than national security," must be turned over to Ghailani's lawyers. In a majority decision written by Gerard E. Lynch, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found Donziger cannot be held in contempt of court for helping the affected Amazon communities in Ecuador raise funds to sustain their litigation against Chevron, which has been found liable in Ecuador (where Chevron insisted the trial be held) for deliberately dumping billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands. Law360 has details on the current developments. Charlotte Kates “Chevron and a pro-corporate judicial ally, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, manufactured ‘contempt’ charges against [Donziger],” the Nobel laureates write. Kaplan allows Chevron to create Orwellian “spying mechanism” targeting adversary Statement from Steven R. Donziger (Editor’s note from Karen Hinton, spokesperson for the Ecuadorian communities: Last week, U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the seizure of Steven Donziger’s passport, computer, and cell phone in retaliation for his advocacy which led to a $12 billion … “This is also a victory for Indigenous peoples throughout the world against oil industry polluters.”, Donziger, who helped his Ecuadorian clients win a historic $9.5 billion pollution judgment against Chevron that has been validated by mulitple appellate courts in Ecuador and Canada, said: “While the decision today is not everything we wanted, it agrees with me on my core claim: that my work over the last five years raising funds for the Ecuadorian communities to pursue enforcement of their judgment against Chevron was appropriate, despite Judge Kaplan trying to claim it was illegal. Donziger represented 30,000 indigenous and local Ecuadorian communities that had been decimated by the dumping, with rates of childhood leukemia and other cancers skyrocketing. In 2014, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan labeled Donziger’s conduct “criminal” in a nearly 500-page ruling affirming most of Chevron’s allegations against him. Judge Kaplan has held Donziger in civil contempt, seized his passport, and fined him an exorbitant $200,000 per day … Chevron sought … This is a huge blow to Chevron’s campaign to demonize me as a way to evade paying the Ecuador judgment which we expect to be fully enforced in due course.”. New York -- In a major rebuke to Chevron and controversial U.S. trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a New York appeals court today threw out a key contempt finding against human rights attorney Steven Donziger that had been used to fine him millions of dollars in court costs and led to criminal contempt charges that resulted in an unprecedented 19-month house arrest without trial. You have entered an incorrect email address! But even though the underlying case was civil, the federal court judge who has presided over the litigation between Chevron and Donziger since 2011, Lewis A. Kaplan… National Lawyers Guild A federal appeals court in New York just threw out Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s key contempt finding against human rights attorney Steven Donziger. The complaint was formally filed by the National Lawyers Guild in conjunction with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). The IADL also has members from more than 50 nations. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to prosecute Donziger, citing limited resources. The complaint alleges that the “statements and actions of Judge Kaplan over the last ten years show him to have taken on the role of counsel for Chevron … rather than that of a judge adjudicating a live controversy before him.” It added, “By these standards, he has violated his duty of impartiality under the canons of judicial conduct.”, The complaint concluded that Judge Kaplan since 2010 has “beyond all bounds of reason” tried “to destroy Steven Donziger, both personally and professionally” and “by extension has blocked the access to remedy for the 30,000 Indigenous clients from the Ecuadorian Amazon that he has represented since 1993.”. It also endorses the very first objection that Donziger made in early 2018 to Chevron’s request to hold him in contempt of court. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in 2014 ruled in favor of Chevron, saying the Ecuadorian judgment had been secured through bribery, fraud and extortion. In the meantime, 29 Nobel laureates and several human rights organizations have criticized the harassment of Donziger by judicial authorities and have demanded his immediate release. Much of the decision was based on the testimony of former Ecuador judge Alberto Guerra, who claimed there was bribery involved in the 2011 judgement. When the lawyer appealed, Kaplan accused him of refusing to comply and referred criminal contempt charges to … The company steered the case to Judge Kaplan, who denied Donziger a jury and then let Chevron pay a witness at least $2 million while moving him and his entire family from Ecuador to the United States. In an extraordinarily rare maneuver, U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan charged Donziger in 2019 with criminal contempt after he refused to turn over his computer and other electronic devices to Chevron while an appeal was pending on whether the unprecedented order was even lawful. A request for more information on the private attorney prosecuting him for criminal contempt was denied. The campaign came after the Ecuadorians had recently won a unanimous decision from Canada’s Supreme Court allowing them to enforce their judgment. We believe the complaint demands urgent investigation by Judge Katzmann to stop this pattern of abuse and to prevent a highly regarded human rights lawyer from being unjustly convicted.”. In a news release last week announcing its formation, the committee said that “trial monitoring committees are often seen in high-profile cases around the world, but they’re most often employed in developing countries with problematic judiciaries.”. The evidence for the prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of a … A judicial order requiring an attorney to disclose confidential work product to adversary counsel is thought to be unprecedented. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. (The appeal is … “The charges should be dismissed immediately so Steven can return to human rights work and get his life back.”. The $9.5b judgment from Ecuador – where Chevron had accepted jurisdiction – is currently being prepared for enforcement against Chevron assets in multiple jurisdictions while the company has carried a litigation attack campaign focused on Donziger in New York, said Patricio Salazar, the Ecuadorian lawyer for the affected communities. Donziger Declines To Mount Defense As Contempt Trial Wraps . The committee includes Michael Tigar, chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation; Nadine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a New York Law School professor; and Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Department of State ambassador-at-large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice. 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