Through backdoor manuevering, Mastro is trying to influence the New York federal appellate court that is hearing Chevron's defense of its ill-fated RICO case.
We hear from a little birdie that Mastro's latest trick involves an apparent unauthorized ex parte contact by his office with a clerk in the appellate court. Mastro's goal was to convince the clerk to change the caption of the RICO case on appeal to produce a more favorable review panel for Chevron.
Ex parte contacts with the court? Isn't that exactly the kind of behavior Mastro claimed repeatedly (albeit without legal basis) was "fraudulent" when it took place in Ecuador?
First, a little background. We already reported that Chevron never had a legal basis to bring the RICO case, as this document explains in detail. RICO never has been used to impose an injunction to block lawyers and impoverished indigenous villagers from bringing their claims against a corporate polluter, as Chevron tried to do in the case.
We might add that Chevron's fabricated complaints of "fraud" and "ghostwriting" were rejected by eight different appellate judges in Ecuador. Even so, controversial federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan decided in favor of the company after a deeply flawed civil RICO trial based on corrupt witness testimony paid for by Chevron, among other problems.
Ultimately, Ecuador's highest court -- the equivalent of our Supreme Court -- affirmed Chevron's liability for causing massive pollution in a 5-0 decision last November. One would think the game would be over for Chevron and it would pay up, much as BP did after its Gulf spill.
Led by Mastro, who never saw a billing opportunity he didn't like, Chevron in 2010 came storming back to the same U.S. court where it earlier had tried to block the claims of the indigenous groups. On the verge of losing in Ecuador after an arduous eight-year trial, Chevron now wanted a second bite at the apple in the same court it had turned its back on years ago.
This was Chevron's ultimate act of forum shopping.
Judge Kaplan, a former corporate defense lawyer with a libertarian bent, was all too happy to indulge Chevron. In the process, he assigned his former law partner Max Gitter to serve as "Special Master" and reap enormous fees. The secret bills were paid exclusively by Chevron.
Encouraged by Kaplan's and Gitter's obvious hostility toward the Ecuadorians and their American lawyer, Chevron dispatched at least 114 lawyers from the Gibson Dunn firm to take over the jurist's giant federal courtroom and mount a retaliatory attack against the Ecuadorians and their counsel. Kaplan had invited Chevron to file the RICO case and then assigned the matter to himself. The courtroom was packed with Chevron executives and lawyers, including company General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate.
As presiding judge, Kaplan denied the defendants a jury on the eve of trial. He also excluded all evidence of Chevron's wrongdoing. He refused to read the Ecuador evidentiary record and he let the company present secret witness testimony.
Kaplan's proceeding was a show trial through and through, not to mention an utter embarrassment to the entire federal judiciary. The spectacle attracted the criticism of dozens of law scholars worldwide.
How things can change when you get to a real appellate court.
The defendants in the RICO case -- including New York lawyer Steven Donziger and two Ecuadorian villagers, Hugo Camacho and Javier Piaguaje -- have slowly turned the tables on Chevron. Their appellate briefs (see here and here) have exposed Mastro's Trojan Horse case for what it is.
Not surprisingly, Mastro is now backing away from his previous bombast. He is claiming to reporters that Chevron's only real interest is in preserving Kaplan's flawed factual "findings" even if the RICO case gets thrown out. Memo to Mastro: when a case gets thrown out on jurisdictional grounds, its factual findings go away.
Regardless, Kaplan's "findings" are so tarnished by his obvious bias that they will be worth far more to the Ecuadorians (as an example of U.S. judicial imperialism) than they will to Chevron.
Mastro probably cannot believe that Donziger and his clients secured competent appellate counsel. One (Burt Neuborne) is a law professor at NYU who helped to settle the Holocaust cases. He is representing the villagers pro bono. Donziger is represented by Deepak Gupta, a rising young star in the world of appellate advocacy who has argued multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chevron's management team -- whose strategy all along was to win by might what it could not win on merit -- is none too happy about the laser focus of Gupta and Neuborne on the weaknesses in the company's case. It should be no surprise that Chevron is again turning to Mastro to try to trick up the process.
The call by Mastro's office to the clerk is most impolitic and unethical. In any event, Mastro's team filed a brief last week where the caption of the case suddenly changed from Chevron v. Naranjo to Chevron v. Donziger.
Why does it appear that Chevron unilaterally decided to change the caption of the case?
The answer is simple and provides insight into Mastro's devious approach.
Chevron was reversed by the same federal appellate court in 2011. At that time, a three-judge panel threw out an unprecedented injunction imposed by Kaplan at Mastro's request that purported to block enforcment of the Ecuador judgment anywhere in the world. The title of that case: Chevron v. Naranjo.
If the appellate court keeps the same caption for the current appeal -- as it should given that the issues are the same -- then Chevron likely will face the same three judges as before. These are judges who will not easily be deceived by Chevron's hijinks.
If Chevron gets the caption changed to Chevron v. Donziger, Mastro would claim that it is a different case warranting different judges. It also would allow Chevron to better align the case with its demonization campaign against Donziger, the lawyer who for two decades has prevailed time and again against Chevron and who has driven the company near mad in the process. (Chevron has used no fewer than 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers on the case since its inception in 1993 while Donziger works from his kitchen table.)
When Mastro tried to defend Kaplan's illegal preliminary injunction before the appellate court in 2011, he was de-pantsed and literally laughed out of the courtroom. At the time, Mastro could not answer the most basic questions posed by the panel. That's one reason why Chevron wants to start anew.
To do so, Chevron has enlisted none other than star Supreme Court lawyer Ted Olson to try to put lipstick on its Ecuador pig. Olson is slated to make a rare appearance in a lower court and argue for the oil company. (It would be great for the villagers if Mastro argues. Chevron might be stupid, but not that stupid.)
For background on Olson's previous failed attempts to save Chevron in the case, see here and here.
This ex parte lobbying is the modus operandi of Mastro and the litigation team at Gibson Dunn. Mastro and his teammates brag to scandal-plagued corporations about their uncanny ability to mount "rescue" operations. (The motto of the firm: "When the law is in the way, we change the law.")
What that really means is the firm uses corporate power, intimidation, and backdoor gamesmanship to get what it wants for clients willing to pay exorbitant fees. Usually it involves accusing opposing counsel of fraud or unethical behavior so the victims are left defenseless.
But Mastro's "dream team" already has run into major troubles given its own lack of ethics. Andrea Neumann and Kristin Hendricks were found by federal judges to have engaged in unethical behavior. Scott Edelman sued a lawyer for the Ecuadorians in California with no legal basis and was fined by a state court judge for violating the First Amendment.
Gibson Dunn's intimidation template was attractive to Chevron CEO John Watson until it started to unravel. We understand that company management is looking for an exit strategy.
It is increasingly clear that the RICO case will not determine the outcome of the dispute. The Ecuadorian indigenous groups are pursuing multiple actions to seize the company's assets in foreign courts. There is nothing Chevron or any U.S. judge can do to stop the enforcement process.
We look forward to explaining to the appellate panel more details of the ethically-challenged Mastro's backdoor maneuvering. That will happen regardless of the caption of the case.
