That movie, which purports to show that American Chevron Oil Company polluted the Ecuadorian Amazon, has hours of footage that was removed. As Law.com shown by presenting those videos, comments made by Steven Donziger in those removed clips, could have been damaging to Chevron's case - they were.
In the NY Times article this paragraph was 24 levels down:
But Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Mr. Berlinger that was signed by 13 news organizations, including The New York Times Company, said on Friday that it was “just not the law” that an investigative journalist cannot be compelled to turn over materials, confidential or otherwise.
The only point we were making is that the mention of the New York Times as a "friend" of the Crude Director should have been placed higher in the article. But John's emailed response is...
The piece is not an attack on Chevron, and describes in detail what a disaster for the plaintiffs the outtakes have been.
Schwartz also says the reason the paragraph was 24 levels down was because it was mentioned it in another NYTimes article, before and in a higher position.
Perhaps it's fair to speculate that, had the New York Times been aware of the exact contents of the outtakes, it may not have filed the amicus brief at all.
Meanwhile, the outtakes have changed the game for the plaintiffs, especially lead attorney Steve Donziger. Aside from Donziger's ideas about threatening Ecuadorian judges, the finding that he wrote a report by a supposedly neutral court-appointed expert may cause harm to his ability to practice law in the future.
What Donziger did was unethical. Period.
Stay tuned.
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