A New York lawyer testified on Thursday that he quit a team that was suing Chevron Corp over environmental pollution in Ecuador in 2010 for “ethical” reasons.
The testimony appeared to bolster Chevron’s effort to prevent the lawyer who headed the litigation, Steven Donziger, from pursuing enforcement of a $19 billion award against Chevron.
Jeffrey Shinder, a partner at the law firm Constantine Cannon, said Donziger had approached him starting in late 2009 about helping enforce any award the Ecuadorean court issued.
Shinder said he quit after just eight days into his formal retention after learning that a report by an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court had actually been written by a consulting firm working for the plaintiffs.
“I wanted no part of it,” Shinder said in federal court in New York.
