According to NBC News, "Pentagon and military officials say some of the classified information released by WikiLeaks contained the names of informants and others who had cooperated with U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, endangering their lives. According to the officials, the U.S. military rounded up many of those named and brought them into their bases for their own protection....
As I discussed yesterday, an Ecuador Court has issued an $8.6 billion judgment against Chevron. I just got off a press conference call with plaintiff's chief lawyer in Ecuador, Pablo Fajardo. He stated that the plaintiffs will seek enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment throughout the world as soon as the Ecuador appeals process is complete. (At...
Today an Ecuador court fined Chevron $8.6 billion for environmental damage. According to the Wall Street Journal, $5.4 billion of that is to restore polluted soil, $1.4 billion to create a health system for the community, $800 million to treat individuals injured by the pollution, $600 million to restore polluted waters, $200 million to restore native species, $150 million...
Today the Second Circuit denied panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. My colleague Trey Childress has details here....
The stakes just became larger in the ongoing battle over alleged environmental damage in Ecuador. Chevron just filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Steven Donziger and forty-seven lawyers, experts, consultants and named plaintiffs alleging RICO, fraud, tortious interference with contract, trespass and unjust enrichment. The Complaint is available here. The Complaint alleges...
I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America. ~Langston Hughes (1925) Langston Hughes wrote this just one generation before Martin Luther King. One...
I received this notice from my friend Gary Born and thought it worth sharing. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for any academic interested in international arbitration. My Pepperdine colleague Tom Stipanowich was the resident scholar last semester, and he could not say enough about the experience. Here's the formal announcement: The International Arbitration Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering...
It is with great concern that I hear about this because it puts Julian and his defence in a bad position. I do not like the idea that Julian may be forced into a trial in the media. And I feel especially concerned that he will be presented with the evidence in his own language for the first...
The Ninth Circuit this week ruled that there was no federal policy with respect to the Armenian Genocide, thereby allowing insurance claims brought by Armenian nationals under a California statute to go forward. In Movsesian v. Victoria Versicherung AG, the Ninth Circuit distinguished Garamendi, concluding that there was no federal policy against recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Indeed, "[c]onsidering...
"The majority of the Supreme Court said that although they would not stop publication in advance, the question of whether there could be prosecution afterwards was a completely different thing." --former Attorney General Michael Mukasey on the Pentagon Papers Mukasey is right. It seems that in the attempts to compare this case to the Pentagon Papers, the essential distinction between the...
The Swiss domain name registrar Switch announced today that it will not shut down Wikileaks.ch as a result of Wikileaks' criminal activity. It does so at its peril. The pharmaceutical industry has long faced the question of registrar liability for hosting illegal pharmaceutical drug websites. Legitscript.com, a pharmaceutical watchdog, has summarized the obligations of domain name registrars...
One of the underlying issues in the Wikileaks controversy is whether Julian Assange is truly that harmful. His defenders, and even some of his critics, maintain that Assange is not that dangerous. I disagree. Diplomacy. Diplomacy will be immeasurably more difficult if what government officials say in secret to one another can never be trusted to remain secret. ...
