© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Chevron logo is pictured after the US government granted a six-month license allowing Chevron to boost oil production in sanctioned Venezuela, in Caracas, Venezuela, December 2, 2022. REUTERS/Gabe Ora/File Photo
Written by Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a dismissed environmental lawyer’s appeal to his criminal contempt conviction after he earlier won but was unable to win the $9.5 billion judgment against him. chevron Corp (NYSE: On Oil Pollution in the Ecuadorean Rainforest.
The court rejected an appeal by Stephen Donziger, who said his trial violated his rights under the US Constitution because special attorneys appointed by a federal judge handled the case against him after the US Department of Justice refused to do so.
Donziger’s attorneys argued that this appointment violated the principles of separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution that define the authority of the three branches of the US government. They argued that the executive, rather than the judiciary, should have pursued any trial.
The New York-based 2nd US Court of Appeals concluded last year that US District Judge Lewis Kaplan had the authority to appoint the plaintiffs, who nonetheless remained under the oversight of the US attorney general.
Two members of the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, objected to the decision not to hear the appeal, with Gorsuch saying the Constitution “does not tolerate what happened here.”
“No matter how much the district court believes Mr. Donziger justifies punishment, the prosecution in this case has breached a fundamental constitutional promise necessary to our freedom,” Gorsuch wrote.
Donziger was sentenced to six months in prison in 2021 after U.S. District Judge Loretta Prisca in Manhattan convicted him of misdemeanor contempt of court for defying court orders arising from a lawsuit filed by Chevron.
The Harvard Law School graduate had represented villagers in Ecuador’s Lago Agrio region who sued Chevron for water and soil pollution caused by Texaco between 1964 and 1992. Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001.
While Chevron did not argue that the pollution occurred, it argued that the company was absolved of any liability because it paid $40 million to clean up the environment in the 1990s and that Ecuador’s state oil company, Petroecuador, is primarily responsible for the pollution.
In 2011, an Ecuadorean court handed down an $18 billion judgment that was later reduced to $9.5 billion against Chevron for pollution from oil production.
Chevron then sued Donziger and others in New York, arguing that he and his associates had obtained the ruling through fraud by arranging the ghostwriting of a major environmental report and bribing the presiding judge.
In 2014, Kaplan concluded in this case that the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron in Ecuador was obtained fraudulently through a corrupt process, making it unenforceable in the United States.
When Chevron suspected Donziger was violating a related ban by trying to monetize or profit from the ruling, Kaplan ordered him to turn over electronic devices and email accounts for examination.
Donziger refused, and Kaplan eventually charged him with criminal contempt. After federal prosecutors in Manhattan refused to take the case, Kaplan, in an unusual move, hired a private attorney, Rita Glavine, to lead Donziger’s trial.