Sanctioned Chevron Lawyers Violating New Court Order In Ecuador Environmental Trial

[Judi Lynn]

Sanctioned Chevron Lawyers Violating New Court Order In Ecuador Environmental Trial
11/30/10 - 01:37 PM EST

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador, Nov. 30, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following was released today by the Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron lawyers who were recently sanctioned for obstructing the Ecuador environmental trial where the company faces a potential $113 billion liability are defying yet another court order, according to court papers made available today.

Chevron is violating an order that it pay a $20,000 fee to a court-appointed expert requested by the oil giant to assess damages at eight Chevron well sites in Ecuador. Chevron faces the potential liability for causing what experts believe is the worst oil-related disaster on earth.

Chevron has admitted it discharged billions of gallons of toxic waste into Ecuador's rainforest when it operated a large oil concession from 1964 to 1990. Evidence provided by the plaintiffs shows that an area the size of Rhode Island has been poisoned and several indigenous groups have been decimated.

In violation of court orders, Chevron's lawyers are refusing to pay court expert Marcelo Munoz because his summaries of the scientific evidence from the Chevron well sites embarrassed the company by finding extensive contamination, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.

More:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10934476/1/sanctioned-chevron-lawyers-violating-new-court-order-in-ecuador-environmental-trial.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. The Chevron shills are busy. Someone unrecc'ed this.

I'm reminded of the U.S. government's active harm to Colombia's justice system, by Uribe/Brownfield's extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S., on mere drug charges, then burying them in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--by completely sealing their cases in the U.S. federal court in Washington DC; U.S. complicity, through ambassador Brownfield in having the spying, death-squad and drug trafficking-connected Alvaro Uribe sign a secretly negotiated U.S./Colombia military agreement that grants 'total diplomatic immunity" to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia (among other outrages)--a document that was recently declared unconstitutional by the Colombian supreme court; U.S. government coddling and protection of Alvaro Uribe to prevent investigation and prosecution for his many crimes; and very probable U.S. complicity in the weird, instant asylum recently given by Panama to major spying witnesses against Uribe,. All of the above are probably connected to Bush Junta crimes in Colombia. Call us "Scofflaw Nation," for that it was we have become.

Even our Attorney General is a scofflaw--not only for his probable involvement in the extraditions of death squad witnesses, but also for his work as a private attorney getting Chiquita execs off with a handslap after they admitted paying millions to death squads in Colombia, who murdered hundreds of trade unionists on Chiquita farms.

Our government has no more regard for the law, when it comes to the rich and powerful, than does Chevron and any other of these multinational corporate monsters, who answer to no one, who are loyal to no country or people, and who operate almost as "floating countries" unto themselves, as they slither around the world stealing peoples' natural resources, destroying their environments and striking with poisonous fangs at their governments and their laws.

All we can do, for now, as U.S. citizens who have no power whatsoever to de-charter and dismantle these corporate monstrosities, and who are forced to pay for every kind of outrage committed by the U.S. government on their behalf, is to express how appalled we are, over and over, and hope that our people wake up one day and reclaim their democracy.