More Moves in Chevron Ecuador Case

At risk of getting flooded with emails from various publicists in the case, disputing this or that, I point readers to a good summary article of the background dispute, the allegations and responses on the issue of plaintiff lawyer behavior, and a set of new materials that have come out since Roger posted on the July video outtakes a couple of months back.  It is by Roger Parloff, in Fortune.  As for the new materials since the summer, Parloff ends with a quote from a US magistrate in North Carolina in September:

The plaintiffs’ argument isn’t playing well before U.S. judges so far. In a ruling issued last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell in Asheville, North Carolina, put it this way: “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.”

Regardless of how the Indians’ case against Chevron should be resolved, and regardless of where anyone’s heart might be, there’s little question that the plaintiffs have been dealt a severe setback. And that their own top lawyers bear much of the blame.