Ecuador: Indigenous groups reaffirm criticisms of US Judge Kaplan in long-standing legal dispute against Chevron over health, environmental impacts
“Rainforest Groups Blast U.S. Judge Kaplan for Ruling Designed to Help Chevron Evade $9.5b Pollution Liability- - 9 March 2018
A little-noticed ruling in late February by controversial U.S. federal judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Chevron’s $9.5 billion Ecuador pollution case already is damaging the judge’s personal credibility and backfiring against the oil giant in Canada where rainforest villagers are attempting to seize company assets to pay for a court-ordered environmental clean-up, according to statements issued by the communities and their U.S. legal representative…“… Carmen Cartuche, the President of the Front for the Defense of the Amazon, the group that brought the environmental case against Chevron on behalf of indigenous and farmer communities that resulted in a $9.5 billion judgment against the company [said that]…“Whenever Kaplan rules against us, it always seems to produce further evidence of Chevron’s fraud and corruption and illustrates the bias of the U.S. justice system in favor of a powerful U.S. company when it comes to the legitimate claims of impoverished people in Ecuador,” she added.
…In a separate statement, U.S. human rights attorney Steven Donziger – who has represented the affected communities in Ecuador since the inception of the case in 1993 -- criticized Kaplan for denying discovery of the Chevron lawyers and for ignoring multiple court rulings in Ecuador and Canada that validate findings that Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into Ecuador’s Amazon region, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak of cancer. Locals call Chevron’s environmental disaster the “Amazon Chernobyl”. (Here is a summary of the evidence against Chevron and the studies showing high cancer rates .)…