Much has been written about Chevron’s discovery requests for certain electronic information related to the plaintiffs, their associates and others involved in the lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador.
Here are the facts:
What is Chevron seeking?
The subpoenas served by Chevron are standard discovery requests in support of our fraud and racketeering case against the plaintiffs’ lawyers and backers. Chevron is not seeking email content, only user account sign-up information and IP logs.
The information that email providers submit in response to these kinds of subpoenas is limited: the identifying information that the user provided when the account was created, the IP address of the computer used to create the account, and whatever login information remains in the email provider’s computers showing when the user logged in and what IP address was used.
Who are the users of these accounts?
The users of the email addresses targeted are not anonymous “John Does”, as has been suggested. Each user has been identified, either through public records or through other records produced through discovery. In most cases, the email addresses contain the users’ names or initials. In a few instances, there is evidence that the accounts were used to communicate between the defendants in the RICO case, and knowing who logged into those accounts is relevant.
Why does Chevron need this information?
This information will allow Chevron to further expose the lengths to which the plaintiffs went to conceal and perpetuate the fraudulent lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador.
Chevron was forced to serve these subpoenas because the plaintiffs’ lawyers have attempted to conceal their fraud and have obstructed discovery in courts around the United States.
Court-ordered discovery already demonstrates that the plaintiffs’ lawyers falsified evidence throughout the trial in Ecuador, blackmailed a judge, ghostwrote “independent” expert reports, and had a hand in writing the $19 billion judgment itself.
Discovery also shows that the plaintiffs’ lawyers and their affiliates managed the fraudulent litigation and the related pressure and extortion campaign from the United States. We have also found through discovery that the plaintiffs’ lawyers and their affiliates created e-mail addresses intended to be aliases to disguise the ultimate user, and used dozens of email accounts to transfer fraudulent documents and to try to conceal their scheme. These subpoenas will identify the owners of those accounts, show how they were used to hide the transfer of documents among the RICO co-conspirators, and provide records proving where the plaintiffs’ lawyers’ and affiliates’ activities in furtherance of the fraud took place.
Has this happened before?
Several courts have required email service providers to produce this exact type of information in other cases, and have rejected the claims that doing so implicates privacy or First Amendment rights.
