Steven Donziger

Donziger's mother raised him in Jacksonville, Florida, where she took him to picket in support of Cesar Chavez's lettuce boycott. While Donziger was a child, his grandfather was a Brooklyn district attorney and judge. Donziger attended Harvard Law School, where he played basketball with Barack Obama. He visited Ecuador in 1993, two years after completing law school, where he says he saw "what honestly looked like an apocalyptic disaster," including children walking barefoot down oil-covered roads and jungle lakes filled with oil.[1]

After his visit to Ecuador, Donziger began working with inhabitants of the Amazonian village Lago Agrio on a class-action lawsuit.[1] In 2009, Donziger became lead organizer of 30,000 indigenous peoples in Ecuador in a class action lawsuit against Chevron over the company's activities in the Lago Agrio oil field.[1] During the trial, Chevron General Counsel Hew Pate authorized payments of USD$2 million to Alberto Guerra, a witness who was paid to falsely testify that Donziger had approved a bribe in Ecuador.[2] Chevron was ordered to pay $18 billion in 2011 as a result of the contamination of indigenous land for oil extraction activities. Following the conclusion of the case, Chevron appealed the ruling,[1] leading to a reduction in the fine to $9.5 billion; no money has been awarded, pending further appeals.[3]

As part of the appeal process, Donziger was ordered by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to submit his cellphone and computer as evidence. Donziger refused, arguing that doing so would violate the attorney-client privilege of his other clients, and was charged with contempt of court by Kaplan. In a move described as "virtually unprecedented" by The Intercept, Kaplan appointed a private law firm to prosecute Donziger after the Southern District Court of New York declined to do so; Donziger is under house arrest awaiting trial.[3]

Donziger's contempt charge and house arrest have been harshly condemned by legal advocates. Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson criticized Chevron and Kaplan, asserting that the corruption and bribery was a "means to protect the oil company from having to answer for its degradation of the Amazon."[4] In 2020, a group of twenty-nine Nobel laureates condemned "judicial harassment" by Chevron and urged the release of Donziger.[5] Human rights campaigners have described the treatment of Donziger as an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), which are used to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.[6]