Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron Submits “Wild” Distortions of Ecuador Video to Federal Court

[Judi Lynn]

August 16, 2010 09:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron Submits “Wild” Distortions of Ecuador Video to Federal Court; Conceals Evidence of Own Misconduct
Violates Federal Court Order By Sending Filings to Media

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In an explosive legal filing, lawyers for Ecuador’s Amazonian communities suing Chevron for environmental damage have submitted evidence that the oil giant is attempting to mislead a U.S. Federal Court with “wild, superficial allegations” based on “snippets” of private video outtakes from Joe Berlinger’s award-winning documentary film CRUDE.

Representatives of the 30,000 rainforest residents, who have suffered from nearly 50 years of living in and around oil contamination, responded in their own legal filing to Chevron’s misleading use of the video clips by claiming Chevron is hiding “massive evidence of its own misconduct” contained in the footage.

CRUDE chronicles part of the 17-year legal battle between the Ecuadorian Amazonian communities and Chevron, which the residents accuse of creating the worst oil-related disaster on Earth.

Chevron had pressed to have U.S. federal judge Lewis Kaplan decide its motion before the plaintiffs could review the entire 500 or hours of film clips, as Chevron refused to share them after receiving them from Berlinger under court order. Review of even a small sample of clips by lawyers for the communities shows clearly that Chevron had attempted to mislead the Court and had violated a court order by turning over excerpts from the outtakes to the media before even serving opposing counsel.

According to the motion filed by the communities:

“Now it is clear why Chevron hid the full outtakes from the Court and from Plaintiffs, and pressed to have this motion decided before Plaintiffs could even review the evidence. Chevron and its counsel have rushed to mislead the Court and the public with a McMotion based on sound-bites and highly-edited, de-contextualized snippets constituting less than 0.1% of the outtakes. It did so while concealing massive evidence in the outtakes of its own misconduct. And it did so in plain violation of a Second Circuit order.”

The motion also pointed out that Chevron provided its filing to a blogger previously paid by Chevron, Carter Wood, and sent out a press release and Tweet around two hours before it served opposing counsel. In direct violation of the court order, Chevron then produced transcripts of the outtakes directly to the San Francisco Chronicle, according to a report in that newspaper.

The legal brief for the communities showed Chevron’s bad faith and selective editing of the film clips, including Chevron's false assertion that consultants for the Amazon communities admitted they have no evidence of groundwater contamination, when in fact those consultants said repeatedly that the groundwater is contaminated.

“Chevron’s failure to accurately describe the evidence is part of a larger scheme by the Chevron lawyers to hide the company’s misconduct in Ecuador,” said Jonathan Abady, an American attorney for the Amazonian communities.

“Chevron is engaged in a desperate attempt to distract attention from the environmental disaster and public health crisis it caused in Ecuador,” he added.

More:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100816005976&newsLang=en

[Peace Patriot]

1. I didn't know that Joe Berlinger had handed over his outtake footage. Interesting how

"freedom of the press" doesn't matter to U.S. courts when the profits of monstrous U.S. multinational corporations are at issue. He has to choose between "freedom of the press" and his own freedom, and of course does not have the resources of Chevron's batteries of high-priced lawyers and a dozen high-priced PR firms, to defend his rights--and all of our rights.

As for Chevron editing the outtakes to remove the evidence against them, no surprise there. There is really nothing that these monsters won't do for profit. Lying and breaking the law are their bread and butter. Poisoning the poor is their dessert. And destroying the planet is their filet mignon dinner.

Total glutinous scumbags.

And it's interesting how these oil monsters BP-ed the Ecuadoran rainforest before they BP-ed the Gulf of Mexico, yet few Americans know anything about the MASSIVE oil disaster, the size of the state of Rhode Island, in Ecuador. These glutinous scumbags monsters have a toady scumbag press corps to keep a lid on their poisoning of "little brown people" AND the "little brown people"'s rebellion--their long, long and very difficult lawsuit against these jerks. The "little brown people" are on the point of winning their lawsuit, at long last, in Ecuador. (And I understand that some of the Indigenous tribespeople who filed this suit were invited by a group of Gulf fisherfolk and labor unions to tell their story and discuss strategies of legal redress.) So now Chevron attacks them personally by selective editing of bits of Belinger's footage, in a PR slander campaign in the U.S.. What can be their object but to get the U.S. government to punish Ecuador if the Ecuadoran court dares to rule against them?

Scum. Truly.