Chevron has been in court since 1993 over oil contamination in Ecuador. Not only has the oil company managed to delay a resolution in the case for more than a decade and a half, while innocent people continue to suffer, but the company shows its disregard for the judicial process by using a formidable array of legal and extrajudicial tactics to try to have the case dismissed or, barring that, to engineer a favorable outcome.

These tactics include spurious lawsuits in the U.S. and international courts intended as distractions from the Lago Agrio trial; brazen attempts to use political and even military pressure to Chevron's advantage; and a highly misleading public relations campaign intended to spread the view that Chevron is not getting a fair trial in Ecuador.

Chevron would like to be seen as the victim of a "shakedown" by opportunistic trial lawyers. The reality is that Chevron is responsible for decades of contamination and disease in the Amazon, and does a great disservice to the rule of law and to basic standards of moral responsibility as long as it refuses to own up to that.

Legal Efforts

Chevron has repeatedly tried to argue before Ecuadorian, U.S. and international courts that the lawsuit it faces in Ecuador is invalid. The basis of Chevron's argument is a specious claim that the Ecuadorian government released the company in 1998 from all liability for environmental damage in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This is false, and no court has ever sided with Chevron on the issue.

In fact, the release signed by Texaco (now Chevron) and the Government of Ecuador in 1998 explicitly excludes private claims against the company from its scope. Private citizens such as the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio trial are entirely within their right to sue Chevron for monetary damages.

Chevron has sued in U.S. Appeals Court to force Ecuador into binding arbitration, claiming the 1998 release obligates Ecuador to indemnify the company. In 2008, Chevron lost this appeal. Chevron, looking for other options, has been testing the waters of international law; the company has sued Ecuador for $1.6 billion at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, for alleged breach of contract.

The case in The Hague deals with the terms of a 1973 contract between Texaco and Ecuador. Chevron's timing in pursuing it now appears suspiciously politically motivated, likely intended to undermine the civil trial that is underway in Lago Agrio by discrediting Ecuador's government and courts, or to lay the groundwork for an appeal to international courts if Chevron loses its court battle in Ecuador.

Political Pressure

Chevron paints itself as a victim of extrajudicial pressure in Ecuador. The company condemns Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa for making public statements in sympathy with the plaintiffs, arguing that this constitutes executive branch interference in the judicial process and renders it impossible for the company to get a fair trial.

What Chevron will not tell you is that the company itself has tried numerous times to persuade the executive to interfere in the case, on its behalf. In 2003, before the trial even began in Lago Agrio, Chevron's local lawyers were visiting Ecuador's attorney general and urging him to persuade the judge to drop the case. Chevron also attempted in 2006 to secure the support of President Alfredo Palacio, and has appealed to current officials including Security Minister Gustavo Larrea, to undermine the civil trial.

Chevron has also flexed its political muscle in the United States. The company hired well-connected lobbyists, including former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, to urge the U.S. Trade Representative to withhold special trade privileges for Ecuador unless the case against it were dropped. This would have amounted to holding Ecuador's economy hostage in exchange for favorable treatment of a U.S. corporation accused of wrongdoing.

The USTR lobbying effort did not go well for Chevron. It attracted criticism from prominent senators, including now-President Barack Obama, and unflattering media attention, particularly in a 2008 Newsweek story which quoted a Chevron lobbyist as saying, "We can't allow little countries to screw around with big companies like this." Nonetheless, Chevron's lobbying activities reveal how far the company will go to avoid the judgment of the courts.

Military Ties in Ecuador

If Chevron's willingness to use its political influence in the United States is not threatening enough, the company's close ties to the Ecuadorian military in Lago Agrio are far more worrisome. Chevron lawyers and executives have been housed on the base of Special Forces Division "Rayo 24" in Lago Agrio during the course of the trial, and Chevron is known to have paid the military to provide security. The Ecuadorian Armed Forces also provided private security to Texaco during the years of its operation in the country.

Irregularities in the trial process seem to have arisen from this cozy relationship. For example, an inspection of the Guanta petroleum separation station was cancelled in October 2005, on account of a supposed plan by local Cofán indigenous people to disrupt the inspection and take Chevron personnel hostage. In reality, the one page document alleging the existence of such a security threat seems to have been fabricated by military officials on behalf of Chevron, as there is no credible evidence that such a plan ever existed.

Most worrisome is a series of threats and attacks against people connected to the plaintiffs in the case in 2005 and 2006. Multiple plaintiffs' lawyers received death threats, and one spokeswoman was ambushed while driving by a truck without license plates, which attempted to force her car off the road and into a ditch. A community organizer's daughter was the victim of a failed kidnapping attempt. One plaintiffs' lawyer found his office burglarized - documents were taken, while money and valuables were not.

Chevron has never been tied to this apparent intimidation campaign, but those involved in at least two instances appear to have had military connections. Chevron refused to condemn the pattern of illegal acts, despite that the perpetrators seem to have intended to act on Chevron's behalf.

Dishonest Public Relations Campaign

Chevron uses a smoke-and-mirrors approach to try to convince the public, government officials, and even international courts, that it's not getting a fair trial in Ecuador. To hear Chevron tell it, the trial is a farce, a "shakedown" of a profitable company over pollution for which it is not responsible. Unfortunately for Chevron, tens of thousands of scientific tests, and the experiences of thousands of people who have lived with contamination for decades, tell a different story.

The fundamental issue is that Ecuador's Oriente suffers pervasive contamination from oil operations, and that this problem dates very clearly to Texaco's negligient operations. Chevron's effort at an end run around the courts depends on a public relations campaign designed to obfuscate that fundamental issue as much as possible, in order to convince the public (and its political leaders) to see the oil major as victim instead of aggressor.

Smear Campaigns

Chevron has targeted individuals associated with the case in order to attack their credibility. After plaintiffs' lawyer Pablo Fajardo and community organizer Luis Yanza won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2008, Chevron took out full-page newspaper ads accusing the two of fabricating their story and being con artists. (See Fajardo and Yanza's response to this ad here.)

Chevron has also aggressively attacked the credentials and impartiality of Richard Cabrera, the court-appointed independent expert in the case. The timing appears opportunistic, as Chevron had previously paid Cabrera for his work in an earlier phase of the trial, and had no objection to his qualifications at the time.

Attacks on Ecuadorian Court System

Chevron claims that the Ecuadorian judicial system is fundamentally corrupt, and that pressure from the executive branch has caused the trial to degenerate into a farce. This stance is a shocking 180 degree reversal from ten years ago, when Texaco submitted no less than ten affidavits to U.S. district court in New York praising the fairness of the Ecuadorian courts. Chevron petitioned aggressively to have the case sent to Ecuador, and was granted its wish on the condition that it accept whatever judgment was handed down in Ecuador. Only now that the trial is going badly does Chevron complain that the deck is hopelessly stacked against it. The reality is that the trial is proceeding fairly, the evidence collected is clear, and Chevron is responsible for an environmental disaster.

Sham Science

Chevron's scientists use methods designed to minimize evidence of contamination at the company's former production sites and waste pits. These methods include tests considered by authorities such as the U.S. EPA to be utterly inappropriate for measuring this kind of oil pollution. To learn more about these deceptive methods, click here.

Chevron also pays consultants to produce studies that cast doubt on plaintiffs' claims about the health impacts of oil pollution. These studies are often given directly to the media, without being subject to academic peer review. This is part of a strategy, famously employed by tobacco companies as well, to manufacture the appearance of greater scientific uncertainty than actually exists. There is in fact compelling evidence of a health crisis linked to oil activities in the region, despite that it is of course impossible to prove that any one specific cancer case or miscarriage was caused by oil pollution.