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The gripping story of one American lawyer’s obsessive crusade—waged at any cost—against Big Oil on behalf of the poor farmers and indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest.
Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the Ecuadorian peasants and tribes people whose lives were affected by decades of oil production near their villages and fields. During twenty years of legal hostilities in federal courts in Manhattan and remote provincial tribunals in the Ecuadorian jungle, Donziger and Chevron’s lawyers followed fierce no-holds-barred rules. Donziger, a larger-than-life, loud-mouthed showman, proved himself a master orchestrator of the media, Hollywood, and public opinion. He cajoled and coerced Ecuadorian judges on the theory that his noble ends justified any means of persuasion. And in the end, he won an unlikely victory, a $19 billion judgment against Chevon--the biggest environmental damages award in history. But the company refused to surrender or compromise. Instead, Chevron targeted Donziger personally, and its counter-attack revealed damning evidence of his politicking and manipulation of evidence. Suddenly the verdict, and decades of Donziger’s single-minded pursuit of the case, began to unravel.
Written with the texture and flair of the best narrative nonfiction, Law of the Jungle is an unputdownable story in which there are countless victims, a vast region of ruined rivers and polluted rainforest, but very few heroes.
- Sales Rank: #293530 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-22
- Released on: 2015-09-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .79" w x 5.18" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Greek tragedy in many acts
By Bart Motes
"This is a tale with no shortage of knaves and villains." -- Paul Barrett, Law of the Jungle
Paul Barrett has written a very good primer to the saga of Steven Donziger's guerrilla war against Chevron and Chevron's relentless carpet bombing counter-attack. It could be tougher on Chevron, it is true. But, Barrett is fairer than I would have thought when in background I read furious denunciations of the book by Steven Donziger and people sympathetic to him.
I can safely say that I have never done as much background material reading and research for any book review as I have for this. I read Judge Kaplan's opinion and appeals of it. I read articles by the Chevron legal team on the use of Section 1782, and, frankly was impressed by their tenaciousness. I read Karen Hinton's twitter feed and Huffington Post article. I spent some time on Steve Donziger's webpage. I read the (rather clearly ghostwritten) affidavit of Pablo Farjado. With all that, although I think that Paul Barrett could have given more time over to Chevron's misdeeds, for the most part, his narrative was faithful to what I learned from my own research.
The topic is also incredibly polarizing. I am sure that a researcher at an agency hired by Chevron will soon be typing up an analysis of my comments along with a summary of my biography and my perceived biases and weaknesses. And, some earnest intern at Amazon Watch will probably be doing much the same, though with less attention to the order of the email addresses of the recipients that she sends it to. (You may think I'm exaggerating, but take a look at the wikipedia page of William Langewiesche. He's an amazing writer, but he made the mistake of writing an overly sympathetic piece, Jungle Law, the title of which Barrett riffs on, about the Ecuadorian plaintiffs. Chevron obtained Donziger's email correspondence with him, which revealed that he was, well overly sympathetic, to Donziger, et al. Consequently his entire wiki profile deals with Chevron's take on his "bias.")
So let's put all that aside. Is the book fair to all parties? Basically yes.
Barrett does a good job of laying out the history of the region and Texaco's actions. Texaco cut a deal with Ecuador's government to extract the oil from the region. No one cared much about the indigenous people. Best practices for extracting oil involved slightly more expensive processes of lining waste pits to prevent ground water contamination and reinjection of byproducts into the ground. Texaco did neither, instead leaving vast ecological devastation in its path. Barrett goes to great pains to stress that the Ecuadorian national oil company didn't do much better. Google the actual human damage. It's pretty stunning. Barrett discusses some of it, but his analysis is fairly cursory and this is a flaw of the book.
Enter Steven Donziger, an ambitious Harvard Law graduate, former Latin American investigative journalist, and man on a mission. Donziger is a dynamic showman figure capable of charming and alienating in equal measure. He has been fighting this case for the past twenty years. Donziger is a fascinating, larger than life character. Since he graduated from law school in 1991, he's only had one case--this one. Like Tom Hagen, he has a very special practice.
Donziger does an amazing job of shepherding this litigation, surviving an endless series of Chevron's litigation gambits--at one point filing 37 motions in a single hour, this stratagem due apparently to an Ecuadorian rule of judicial administration that requires motions to be ruled on in three days, or the judge must be replaced--acquiring litigation funding to resist Chevron's attempts to outlast the Ecuadorians, and getting celebrity and media attention and support to publicize it. Ultimately, he obtains a $19 billion judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorean court. But, his cult of personality falters at a crucial moment, allowing Chevron to gain the upper hand. As a result, Chevron was able to bring a suit in New York that places the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' entire recovery into question.
The Donziger case is an interesting look into what ethical lapses are and are not permitted in the American legal system. Chevron's counsel may be aware of numerous bad acts by their clients. There is even evidence that Chevron has provided a comfortable living for fact witnesses, what ruder people might call a bribe. Yet, the American legal system has a difficult time reaching these ethical problems. Donziger, however, has acted flamboyantly and played fast and loose in filings and in public statements. The American legal system, aided by able and well-funded counsel on the other side, has no difficulty dealing with such issues when brought to their attention.
Although Texaco polluted the Ecuadorean jungle, Chevron doesn't get a pass either. Chevron's corporate counsel's arrogance and unwillingness to settle this case, not to mention overly clever strategy in getting the case dismissed in New York and insisting that the plaintiffs refile in Ecuador, still may cost them very dearly, the current success of Gibson Dunn's Hail Mary RICO action against Donziger notwithstanding.
My end conclusion is that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs would have been sanctioned in American court, but their verdict would stand. It is clear that both parties engaged in very tough extra-litigation tactics. Chevron appears to have thrown money around to judicial and non-judicial actors like a drunken sailor. Donziger and company embraced the philosophy of politics trumping legal principles too freely. Judge Kaplan is a distinguished and capable jurist, but his willingness to accept representations by Chevron while not scrutinizing the impact of Chevron's own misdeeds may have led to Donziger receiving a less than fair result in his courtroom. I was particularly stunned by his command to Judge Zambrano that he not refresh his memory by consulting his opinion when he was on the stand. That was probably erroneous.
Paul Barrett has written a vital and interesting book. But, the story is not over yet. Donziger is currently appealing Judge Kaplan's ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which has already reversed Judge Kaplan once. Read the book and then don't stop reading.
Update: Yesterday, the Second Circuit heard Donziger's appeal. In a shocker, Judge Wesley asked if there was any reason why the 2nd Circuit couldn't deem the Ecuadorian judgment tainted but allow Donziger to refile in Manhattan! Unlikely, but yet another twist.
Recommended.
24 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
World-class investigative journalism, and a painstakingly detailed and evenhanded account of an infuriating story
By Lachlan Markay
I would say that Mr. Barrett's account of this epic legal and political battle reads like a John Grisham novel, but that would be selling short its nuance, painstaking detail, and moral ambiguity. There are no good guys in this story - he reserves deserved condemnation for the corrupt plaintiffs' attorneys in the case, the oil company responsible for pollution in the Amazon, and the Ecuadorian government complicit in that pollution. Its only ethically uncompromised characters are the indigenous Ecuadorians whose lives have been destroyed as the book's antagonists go to war over what quickly devolves into a brutal and vindictive legal, political, and public relations battle.
Many, including a number of reviewers here (whom I suspect are motivated more out of a reflexive hostility to Big Oil than a well grounded and sincere concern about the real victims in this case), see the Chevron/Donziger affair as one of moral absolutes, David and Goliath, the good guys vs. bad guys. The lesson of Law of the Jungle is simply that no such dichotomy exists. Texaco (later acquired by Chevron) could have cleaned up pollution in the Amazon for a relative pittance when it left the country in the early 90s. Plaintiffs and environmental activists could have prioritized actual cleanup efforts over their attempts to score an historic win over a Designated Villain. The Ecuadorian government could have honored its contractual obligations to clean up areas of the rainforest in which its state-owned company had operated. None of that happened, and the impoverished residents of Lago Agrio and the surrounding areas have suffered greatly as a result.
The book's central character, crusading trial lawyer and activist Steven Donziger, is a perfect microcosm of the story's moral ambiguity. We find ourselves siding with him as he signs on to the case, fresh out of law school, and sharing his righteous indignation at Texaco's inexcusable refusal to take responsibility for its actions in Ecuador. By the end of the book, it's clear that not only has Donziger ceded any moral high ground and lapsed into an utterly unethical (and possibly criminal) campaign of deception, but that he has actively impeded efforts to mitigate the real problems in Ecuador in an effort to secure a court verdict that he sees as both a moral crusade and a means of personal aggrandizement.
Unsurprisingly, Donziger has taken to attacking Barrett for his work. True to form, many of his claims are utterly and bizarrely devoid of any semblance of accuracy. (For example, he claims on his personal blog that Barrett "scarcely mentions lead Ecuadorian attorney Pablo Fajardo," when in fact Fajardo is a central character of the book, mentioned perhaps more often than any other individual but Donziger himself.)
Law of the Jungle is the most exhaustive, painstakingly researched, evenhanded account of this epic battle to date. Read it if you're tired of the usual "good vs. evil" moralizing of contentious environmental debates. You won't put it down with much faith in either side of these sorts of disputes, but you will have gained a fuller understanding of the compromises inherent in global politics, law, trade, environmentalism, and economic development, and with a deeper appreciation for investigative journalism that can illuminate our understanding of complex and controversial issues.
It's also just a damn good read.
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
An epic struggle for justic
By Malvin
"Law of the Jungle" by Paul M. Barrett is a fascinating reconstruction and analysis of the famous class action lawsuit filed against Texaco (later Chevron) on behalf of the indigenous people of Ecuador. Mr. Barrett is a best-selling author who has written extensively about the landmark case including research gathered first-hand in the U.S. and Ecuador. This highly readable, engaging and dramatic book narrates an epic struggle for justice against entrenched corporate and governmental power, vice and corruption.
Mr. Barrett focuses much of the story on the attorney, Steven Donziger who championed the cause of the tribal peoples of the rainforest. Donziger's flair for public relations in the 1990s helped gain attention for the lawsuit including support from celebrities around the world (in fact, I was one of those inspired by the struggle and co-wrote Save the Rainforest, a tune featuring Larry King on vocals, that made a passing reference to these events). But Mr. Barrett shows us that, sadly, there was much more to the fairy tale, David-versus-Goliath story than most of us realized.
Mr. Barrett details the many cynical twists and turns that ensued over twenty years of proceedings as Donziger did whatever he felt was necessary to win. Mr. Barrett allows the reader leeway to consider whether it may have been a personal desire for wealth, prestige or some other character flaw that might have driven Donziger to the point of recklessness, a Harvard graduate whose acquaintances include some of the most powerful people on the planet. Mr. Barrett's story makes it abundantly clear that Donziger's actions crossed an ethical line that ultimately made it a simple matter for Chevron to dismiss the case. It seems that Donziger made a fool of nearly everyone; while crushing the hopes of the poor suffering people of the Ecuadorian rainforest to gain the justice they so richly deserved.
I highly recommend this painstakingly researched and bittersweet book to everyone.
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