Steven Donziger Loses Chevron Ecuador Appeals Court Battle

Chevron Ecuador lawsuit boss and budding movie star Steven Donziger lost another important battle in the ongoing Chevron / Ecuador issue. Steven The Don, as this blogger will refer to Steven Donziger for his role as "The Godfather," even toward discussing a plan of intimidating an Ecuador judge, has failed, once again, to quash the Chevron subpoena granted by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan.

According to the Courthouse News Service, on Wednesday, The 2nd Circuit Court agreed with Judge Kaplan's order in responding to Donziger's appeal of the order which has him in the position of having to be interviewed by Chevron lawyers and turn over 8,000 pages of documents related to the case.

The 2nd Circuit Court wrote:

After an independent review of the record, we conclude,substantially for the reasons stated by the District Court in its orders of November 10 andNovember 30, 2010, that the District Court did not abuse its discretion. We therefore affirm theOctober 20 and November 29, 2010, orders of the District Court and we remand the cause to theDistrict Court for further proceedings consistent with this order.

In other words, Steven The Don has to work under Judge Kaplan's order and with Chevron's subpoena.

What This Means

What this all means is an ultimate path toward proof that Steven the Don's claims that the American Oil Giant polluted the Ecuadorian Amazon until 1992 - but using false information and studies gathered well after Chevron left Ecuador, and during a time when Petroecuador, Ecuador's own oil company, was using the same oil wells and production facilities - is false and fraudulent.

Courthouse reports that Karen Hinton, the active spokesperson for Donziger, said the ruling has nothing to do with the merits of the lawsuit.

Not true.

The lawsuit Donziger has worked on covers up Petroecuador's own terrible environmental record as well as Ecuador's overall strategy of the nationalization of oil. Donziger's non-profit pitbulls at Amazon Watch have asserted that Ecuador's not a party to Steven The Don's lawsuit.    That's not true, as was discussed in this space several times before.

The silence of Amazon Watch is deafening, and for good reason.  Someone misled them.   Even now, they have to question the merits of this case.

Not All Bad Or Good

The overall point is that no one party is bad.  Chevron has been painted that way and with a frequency greater than one can imagine.  Yes, oil companies do pollute, and they help curb and prevent it too.  And the implication in this for some time is Steven The Don and his people are angels.  Not so. Indeed, Steven himself has met with Petroecuador execs - one can guess why he's not suing Ecuador's oil giant.  Moreover, they've been used by an Ecuador that seeks to keep oil revenues for itself, has kicked out American oil companies, and has done little, if anything, for its poor.

Stay tuned.