RESPONSE BY GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP TO
JANUARY 4, 2012 ARTICLE BY AMAZON WATCH
Paul Paz y Miño’s January 4, 2012 piece in the Huffington Post regarding Gibson, Dunn
& Crutcher LLP and its client Chevron is false and misleading. It is undoubtedly intended to distract attention from the misdeeds of Mr. Miño’s own colleagues. Mr. Miño is not a journalist,
but an activist, and, although it is not disclosed in the Huffington Post piece, his organization,
Amazon Watch, is a named co-conspirator in a pending federal racketeering complaint in New
York detailing its misconduct in connection with a fraudulent Ecuadorian lawsuit being pursued
against Chevron. Mr. Miño not only fails to disclose his organization’s stake in the outcome of
the controversy he purports to cover, but he conceals the numerous court rulings finding misconduct on the part of Amazon Watch’s co-conspirators. Lacking any evidence to support their false
and outlandish claims, the plaintiffs’ representatives and surrogates fabricated it, as several U.S.
court rulings demonstrate. If the (largely U.S.) lawyers running the Ecuadorian litigation had
any evidence to support their claims, they would not have had to resort to the fraud and racketeering activities laid out in Chevron’s federal complaint. But eight federal judges, all in proceedings where Gibson Dunn represented Chevron, have found that representatives of the Ecuadorian
plaintiffs have engaged in fraudulent conduct. See Appendix A, infra. The article’s misstatements and errors are so numerous that Gibson Dunn can here address only a few of them.
The January 4 piece purported to discuss Gibson Dunn’s representation of Chevron in
connection with a fraudulent $18 billion Ecuadorian judgment. Yet Mr. Miño ignores the mass
of evidence and court documents submitted in New York federal court and elsewhere showing
that this judgment was secretly ghostwritten by the plaintiffs’ representatives. See, e.g., Chevron
v. Page, Case No. 11-CV-00395 (D. Md.) Dkt. No. 18 at 17-19. He ignores the disclosure of the
conspirators’ correspondence, records, and hours of explosive video outtakes from the movie
“Crude,” which capture the conspirators themselves on film engaging in misconduct. Excerpts
from these videos are available on Chevron’s website at
http://www.chevron.com/ecuador/videos. He even ignores the evidence that the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who pose as defenders of the Amazon and its inhabitants, actually attempted to stop Ecuador’s state-owned oil company from remediating petroleum sites for which it alone is responsible, because they feared it would undermine their case against Chevron. The remediation program not only underscores Petroecuador’s legal and moral responsibility to clean up the sites, but
its projected cost of $96 million—including the sites the plaintiffs sought to force Chevron to
pay for—made a mockery of the plaintiffs’ multi-billion dollar allegations against Chevron. Am.
Compl. ¶ 98.
The evidence of wrongdoing is overwhelming, as numerous federal courts have found.
For example, the Western District of North Carolina court found that “what has blatantly occurred in this matter would in fact be considered fraud by any court,” while the District of New
Mexico court concluded that “[t]he release of many hours of the outtakes has sent shockwaves
through the nation’s legal communities, primarily because the footage shows, with unflattering
frankness, inappropriate, unethical and perhaps illegal conduct.” See Appendix A, infra. And
the plaintiffs’ own lawyers have admitted to their wrongdoing in their internal correspondence,
admitting that their conduct constituted “fraud,” and fretting that they could “go to jail” if their
conduct is exposed. See Chevron v. Donziger et al., Case No. 11-CV-0691 (S.D.N.Y.) Dkt. No.
283 (Chevron’s Amended Complaint) (available at:
http://www.chevron.com/documents/Pdf/Ecuador/AmendedComplaint.pdf) ¶¶ 270-85.
Mr. Miño does not mention any of this evidence, however, or acknowledge the string of
federal court rulings that have gone against the plaintiffs, and which also implicate his own organization, Amazon Watch. As discussed in Chevron’s detailed and thoroughly documented
complaint in the racketeering action, Amazon Watch representatives have long been active participants in the plaintiffs’ scheme to capture and corrupt the Ecuadorian judiciary and extort billions from Chevron. The group’s founder, Atossa Soltani, and another Amazon Watch employee
appear in the “Crude” outtakes engaging in a discussion of, in the words of plaintiffs’ lawyer
Steven Donziger, how to “control” and “pressure” the Ecuadorian court. The discussion was so
extreme that Ms. Soltani felt compelled to state for the cameras that “it is illegal to conspire to
break the law.” Am. Compl. ¶ 75. Amazon Watch has repeatedly made false statements to the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in an attempt to generate baseless investigations of
Chevron as part of their pressure campaign. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 75, 219, 239. And Amazon Watch
has benefited financially from this relationship, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in
cash contributions from the representatives of the Ecuadorian plaintiffs. Am. Compl. ¶ 224.
While Amazon Watch’s wrongdoing is demonstrated by the extensive evidence obtained
by Gibson Dunn and Chevron in a series of discovery actions in U.S. courts, Mr. Miño offers no
such basis for his allegations against Gibson Dunn. When he does cite a source, it is in almost
every case a press release put out by his own Amazon Watch, which in turn provides no basis for
its assertions, or cites to the Ecuadorian plaintiffs’ own unsupported briefs and court filings.
Those press releases also frequently cite other press releases, or even other articles written by
other Amazon Watch staff. For example, Mr. Miño’s source for the utterly false allegation that
Chevron offered a “bribe” to Ecuador in order to settle the case is an Amazon Watch press release which in turn cites a blog post by Mitchell Anderson, one of Mr. Miño’s colleagues at Amazon Watch. And Mr. Anderson’s “source” for his blog post is, in his own words, “[w]ord on the
street.”
Gibson Dunn is proud of its work on behalf of Chevron, and believes the judicial record
in the many related proceedings speaks for itself. And the firm has been widely recognized for
its successes in this case. The American Lawyer, which unlike Amazon Watch has no stake in
the outcome of the dispute, and is one of the premier publications chronicling the global legal
scene, recently named Gibson Dunn “Litigation Department of the Year,” for the second consecutive time. In both instances, The American Lawyer specifically cited Gibson Dunn’s work on
behalf of Chevron as one of the reasons for the award. The magazine’s most recent profile of the
firm is available on Gibson Dunn’s website at
http://gibsondunn.com/publications/Documents/GDC-LDOYLitigationWinner.pdf. In it, The
American Lawyer praises Gibson Dunn’s work not just on the Chevron matter, which the magazine praised as a “riveting demonstration of Gibson Dunn’s dogged approach to fact-finding,”
but also for its similar work on behalf of Dole Food Company, Inc., where the firm uncovered
“evidence of fraud” and for its representation of the plaintiffs in the landmark civil rights action,
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, in which the firm successfully overturned a California voter initiative
outlawing gay marriage. The magazine concluded that Gibson Dunn’s recent results constituted
an “astounding record of high-stakes victories.”
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Gibson Dunn has also been repeatedly recognized for its commitment to pro bono legal
services; it was recently named Pro Bono Counsel of the Year by the Legal Community Against
Violence, and has also been recognized for its pro bono services by the National Law Journal,
the National Legal Aid & Defender Organization, the Urban Justice Center, and the American
Bar Association. See http://gibsondunn.com/probono/Pages/AwardsAccolades.aspx.
Additional news coverage of Gibson Dunn’s exposure of the Ecuadorian fraud against
Chevron is available at: http://www.chevron.com/ecuador/newscoverage.
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APPENDIX A
FINDINGS OF FRAUD BY U.S. FEDERAL COURTS
U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina: “While this court is
unfamiliar with the practices of the Ecuadorian judicial system, the court must believe that the
concept of fraud is universal, and that what has blatantly occurred in this matter would in fact be
considered fraud by any court. If such conduct does not amount to fraud in a particular country,
then that country has larger problems than an oil spill.” Chevron Corp. v. Champ, Nos. 1:10-mc27, 1 :10-mc-28, 2010 WL 3418394, at *6 (W.D.N.C. Aug. 30, 2010).
U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico: “The release of many hours of the
[Crude] outtakes has sent shockwaves through the nation’s legal communities, primarily because
the footage shows, with unflattering frankness, inappropriate, unethical and perhaps illegal conduct.” In re Chevron Corp., Nos. 1:10-mc-00021-22 (JH/LFG), slip op. at 3-4 (D.N.M. Sept. 2,
2010).
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California: “There is ample evidence
in the record that the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs secretly provided information to Mr. Cabrera, who
was supposedly a neutral court-appointed expert, and colluded with Mr. Cabrera to make it look
like the opinions were his own. Thus, any privilege which existed was waived; Respondents’
claim of privilege neither bars production of the subpoenaed documents nor gives [plaintiffs’
technical consultant] Powers a basis for refusing to testify.” In re Applic. of Chevron Corp., No.
10-cv-1146-IEG (WMC), 2010 WL 3584520, at *6 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2010).
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: “[T]here is more than a little evidence that [plaintiffs’ lead U.S. counsel] Donziger’s activities—as several courts already
have held in the context of Section 1782 applications against experts involved on the Lago Agrio
plaintiffs’ side—come within the crime-fraud exception to both the privilege and to work product protection.” In re Applic. of Chevron Corp., 749 F. Supp. 2d 141, 167 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 10,
2010).
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit: “Though we recognize that the Lago
Agrio Court may view what seems to us to be a conflict of interest differently than we do, we
believe that this showing of [plaintiffs’ technical consultant] Villao’s dual employment is sufficient to make a prima facie showing of a fraud that satisfies the first element of the showing necessary to apply the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.” In re Applic. of Chevron Corp., 633 F.3d 153, 166 (3d Cir. Feb. 3, 2011).
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: “There is ample evidence
of fraud in the Ecuadorian proceedings. The LAPs, through their counsel, submitted forged expert reports in the name of [technical expert] Dr. [Charles] Calmbacher. Their counsel orchestrated a scheme in which [plaintiffs’ technical consulting firm] Stratus ghost-wrote much or all of
[court expert] Cabrera’s supposedly independent damages assessment without, as far as the record discloses, notifying the Ecuadorian court of its involvement. . . . When it became evident that
the LAPs’ improper contacts with Cabrera, including the pre-appointment meetings, ghost4
writing, and illicit payments, would be revealed through the Section 1782 proceedings, LAP representatives undertook a scheme to “cleanse” the Cabrera report. They hired new consultants
who, without visiting Ecuador or conducting new site inspections and relying heavily on the initial Cabrera report, submitted opinions that increased the damages assessment from $27 billion to
$113 billion.” Chevron Corp. v. Donziger, 768 F. Supp. 2d 581, 636 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 7, 2011).
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: “As to the crime-fraud exception, I concluded that Judge Kaplan had made findings that required application of that exception to information relating to three different subjects: (1) the report to which an expert’s
name had fraudulently been appended (the ‘Calmbacher report’); (2) the report that was purportedly independent but had been ghostwritten by agents of the LAPs (the ‘Cabrera report’); and (3)
the memoranda that were purportedly independent reports intended to supercede the Cabrera report, but which in fact simply repeated that report’s findings (the ‘cleansing memos’).” Chevron
Corp. v. Salazar, No. 11-civ-3718, 2011 WL 3424486, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 3, 2011).
U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland: “I do think that probable cause has
been established if for no other reason than for the production of the admittedly co-authored, or
documents co-authored by [interns for the plaintiffs] the Pages, which has found its way into the
decision in Ecuadorian court . . . . So, at the end of the day, regardless of how I get there, and I
get there, I get to the same place by at least four or five different routes. This information is very
much discoverable. It is no longer privileged, and it is to be produced immediately.” Chevron
Corp. v. Page, No. RWT-11-1942, Oral Arg. Tr. at 10:17-21, 11:13-23 (D. Md. Aug. 31, 2011).
U.S. District Court for the District of Washington D.C.: “[T]here is more than sufficient evidence of a prima facie case that [plaintiffs’ consultant] the Weinberg Group’s work was
part of a fraud upon the Ecuadorian court.” Chevron Corp. v. The Weinberg Group, No. 11-mc00409-JMF, slip op. at 8 (D.D.C. Sept. 8, 2011).
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