After more than half a decade and countless court appearances in countries around the world, the saga of what’s come to be known as the Chevron Shakedown finally seems to be staggering to a close. If you’ve missed our coverage of this story over the years you can catch up with all of it here. A corrupt court in Ecuador provided a ruling in favor of local interests, ordering Chevron to pay billions of dollars for the cleanup of drilling sites in that country which were, in all likelihood, contaminated by Ecuador’s state-run oil company. The plaintiffs, with the help of various environmental groups and their lead American attorney Steven Donziger, apparently assumed that Chevron would simply pay up rather than go through the hassle of a lengthy legal battle. This has turned out to be one of the worst assumptions in legal history. Read more>>
