Watch the video below, it is quite something. Amazing that they were stupid enough to tape themselves saying this much less turn it into a documentary!
UPDATE: The legal pleading has been added, link below, quite a read.
————-
Excerpt From Wizbang: Environmental Scientist Caught Agreeing To Ignore Her Own Data, Make Up New Claims
Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality.
Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light as a result of a lawsuit. From The New York Times:
An environmental consulting firm named as a defendant in a racketeering suit filed by Chevron Corp. over a landmark pollution lawsuit in Ecuador is continuing to work on another blockbuster case: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill investigation.
Boulder, Colo.-based Stratus Consulting, a long-term contractor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies, is gathering and analyzing data concerning the Gulf of Mexico spill.
Chevron is suing those behind the Ecuadorian case including: the lead attorney Steven Donziger; Stratus Consulting; and Maest. As part of their lawsuit, Chevron obtained through discovery, outtakes from a documentary called “Crude” that show Donziger and Maest colluding ignore their own findings and make up some new unsubstantiated claims. Watch this:
from the YouTube description:
The following is an outtake from Joe Berlinger’s movie Crude. At the March 4, 2007, lunch meeting between plaintiffs’ lead U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger and plaintiffs’ U.S. consultants Charles Champ, Ann Maest and Richard Kamp, they reveal the truth about plaintiffs’ lack of evidence and their intent to manipulate the Ecuadorian court. Maest tells Donziger that they need evidence of groundwater contamination, because plaintiffs did not submit any. Maest admits that, “Right now all the reports are saying it’s just at the pits and the stations, and nothing has spread anywhere at all.” Donziger responds, “Hold on a second, you know, this is Ecuador. … You can say whatever you want, and at the end of the day, there’s a thousand people around the courthouse. You’re going to get what you want. Sorry, but it’s true.” Donziger continues, “Because at the end of the day, this is all for the court just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and bulls**t. It really is. We have enough, to get money, to win.” View more outtakes at YouTube.com/TexacoEcuador. For more information about the Ecuador lawsuit, visit Chevron.com/Ecuador
Read the whole thing at Wizbang: Environmental Scientist Caught Agreeing To Ignore Her Own Data, Make Up New Claims
Here’s the legal pleading, quite a read h/t to Steve
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/ecuador/StampedComplaint.pdf
The lives and times of an environmental scientist…………
I better learn more real math like statistics so I can get government hand outs too!
I am a testifying expert on groundwater, groundwater contamination, fate and transport of organic chemicals in groudnwater, and I work extensively for the extractive industries and I have NEVER had an attorney make such statements to me, even when there were NO cameras around. As the President of a State Licensing Board for Geologists I can’t afford to even think about such things so to me, this is just unthinkable.
Unbelievable!
Oh, wait. These are environmentalist consultants, so what they are saying is ‘all-in-a-day’s work’.
Of course it is “believable”. Silly me for thinking otherwise.
Richard
Seems to be standard fare for so many (environmental) scientists. Like many consultants for business and government, the first step seems to be to find out where the money lies. Step two is to determine what conclusion the business owners/department heads want. Step three, determine the conclusion that will most likely loosen the purse strings. Step four; make the science fit the conclusion.
Somehow this reminds me of those kids who beat someone to a pulp in a subway station, film it on their own cell phone and promptly post it to YouTube.
Post Normal Science?
There’s that word again, ‘extrapolate’. Shameful and criminal.
I am an engineer who does legal expert witness work from time to time and while I have never seen or heard of such blatant collusion between counsel and expert I have unfortunately read a lot of so called evidence that is clearly concocted to suit the narrative of the engaging party. Typically such evidence omits logical reasoning and proper reference to data relying on bald opinion to sketch out a suitable narrative or at least support the team.
It seems to me that scientists and engineers and other technical professions need specific training in the basics of giving evidence, their relationship to the court in question and keeping a proper distance between their commercial self interest and the objectivity of their evidence.
That said, this matter about takes the cake.
More of a political scientists than an actual one.
That whole lawsuit just reeks. It’s lawyers and lobbyists all the way down. Even the “Amazon Defense Coalition”, nominally the plaintiff, is just an astroturf front for a Washington lobbying company called Hinton Communications. The plaintiffs lawyers actually wrote what was purported to be an independent engineer’s technical assessment, and paid him to sign it. The address of the “laboratory” that did the water analysis turned out to be an apartment block. And on and on.
There really is serious ongoing pollution in the area, caused by PetroEcuador, the state oil company, and whatever happens with the Chevron suit isn’t going to have any effect on that.
I was an expert witness once. The barrister who briefed me started off by saying “You mustn’t dream of acting like an American expert witness”. Sad but true.
The science is settled! Haven’t you received the message? hee hee
If anyone here was wonder why the XL pipeline was delayed – then venture no further. These are the kind of people the Obama administration have covering the fat butts. And paid FOR by US taxpaers to stop American growth and job creation strictly to appease the eco-Nazis wing of Obama’s democrats.
More evidence Global Warming is false.
I’m sorry, but we need to see the NEXT minute. We need to see her response to his bafflegab, or transcripts of testimony, or other corroborating details that indicate that she bought into this.
It’s clearly crap, but we need a little more detail to see who willingly stepped in it.
Like Tom G, I am simply flaberghasted that a lawyer would make such a comment, especially on camera. I’m not surprised by the lack of moral outrage by the activists though.
wow . . with that kind of “honesty” they would be able to hide many declines.
“When there’s a Higher Purpose things like honesty take the back seat”. Was it Pol Pot saying that?
Videos like these expose the amateurs and give me some respect for organized criminals.
“I’m sorry, but we need to see the NEXT minute.”
“Crude” is available on Netflix streaming. See if the next minute is shown.
Jeremy said on December 13, 2011 at 2:42 pm:
You respect career politicians loyal to their political “family”?
😉
Wow! I started in Environmental Studies, went to grad school in Geology, and ended up working for big oil. I guess I’m someone who almost ended up a street thug but got my life straightened out.
Is this for real ? How was the movie taken or is it being played by actors ?
The high moral ground is a land where, clearly, ethics don’t grow anymore. Maybe there’s been a climate change.
One sees Ann Maest nodding her head and saying things like “uh-huh,” which might merely mean “I hear you,” so it’s not quite a clincher as to her guilt. The question is then, did she actually end up doing as Steven Donziger suggested? That question should be answerable.
I went to Wizbang and watched a second video they’ve got posted, where Maest is right in the thick of things when the discussion of damages pumps up to $30-50 billion. (Yes, that’s with a “B”).
You just know that these videos will never die and will forever come back to haunt Straus Consulting and especially the good Dr. Ann Maest. Try getting on the stand in any future cases as an “expert” witness … they will follow her for the rest of her career.
The environmental sciences ain’t looking too good lately … Climategate 1 & 2, and now this. What’s shocking isn’t the ethical state of the science … it’s that the whole business is being conducted in such a seemingly casually professional manner.
JEM says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:30 pm
“I’m sorry, but we need to see the NEXT minute. We need to see her response to his bafflegab, or transcripts of testimony, or other corroborating details that indicate that she bought into this.”
We are not going to establish guilt or innocence here. Everyone knows that.
Yep! Boulder Colorado. Now why does that small town keep coming up over and over and over again whenever you get even close to a topic related to climate, anthropogenic global warming, north pole, south pole, on and on… must be billions of tax dollar bilked there.
Ben U. says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:16 pm
One sees Ann Maest nodding her head and saying things like “uh-huh,” which might merely mean “I hear you,” so it’s not quite a clincher as to her guilt. The question is then, did she actually end up doing as Steven Donziger suggested? That question should be answerable.
=============================================================
Go to the link provided, there is a second video in which she participates in the conversation. I don’t know the particulars of her testimony, but if Chevron is pursuing this under RICO….. I’d say it’s pretty damning.
OTOH, I’m no attorney, so perhaps we can get one to comment, but, I thought RICO was exclusively a criminal law and not civil. In other words, if RICO applies, it should be our justice lawyers pursuing this, with significant jail time as a consideration.
What are the objections about our Keystone pipeline, again?
In Maest’s defense, we never see any indication, in this clip, at least that she agrees with the attorney’s strategy. And as an environmenal consultant myself, I have seen attorney’s suggest such ill-advised strategies and seen the experts (myself included) say no, that is going a bridge too far. And this would be both plaintiff’s attorney’s and attorney’s representing industry. Doesn’t mean she didn’t do something wrong, but the only thing this video show is an overzealous, money-grubbing, plaintiff’s attorney.
A lot of our congressmen and women are worse and have been that way since George Washington’s days. If he were here, he could tell us where the congressional money went that he was waiting on for supplies at Valley Forge.
Disgusting, just disgusting.
http://www.chevron.com/documents/Pdf/Ecuador/AmendedComplaint.pdf
here is the entire complaint against these people. Maest is listed as a defendant along with Strauss Consulting. I skipped around in the doc, and it looked like some people (other experts) ran away from this whole thing…telling Donzinger that they didn’t want anything to do with his suit. I think those would be the good guys. Looks like Maest et al. stayed with him to the bitter end.
I think this is an egregious case…but important to remember that many people will be more than happy to lie for a large sum of money. And yes, that includes climate scientists, Solyndra, Pigford, and innumerable other people…the more the deeper the pockets, the more the liars are attracted
We are fighting the same sort of battle against corruption. A lot more will be made public in coming months.
http://www.palmerston-north.info
bill says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:11 pm
I am convinced that you are correct. And Tom G you as well. I too have done considerable expert witness testimony and litigation support on environmental issues. In a recent article here on WUWT (I think) there was a discussion on when political activism in the sciences began (the 1970’s, when I was in uni.) and I have watched it unfold in horror ever since. I believe that was the climate change of which you speak.
I have had to withdraw from several cases where the direction turned to what I have come to term as “flexible ethics”, or the ends justifying the means, by advising the attorneys that I was “not their man”. I have also been requested to provide the names of those who could serve their interests better, because I know far too many of them.
The pursuit of truth and knowledge is, as it was before the Renaissance (or thereabouts), now perceived to be secondary as regards the satisfaction of ego (call it whatever else you wish, but it almost always boils down to this). Whether that be Ptolemy vs. Galileo (then, as mediated by the Catholic Church) or the case in question here.
Perhaps this anthropogenic “climate change” is also cyclical. It may have cycles of different durations as well. Consider that Homo habilis is credited with first use of stone tools 2.8 MYA. It took about another 1 MY to add a second cutting edge setting off the Acheulian period. One wonders the many discussions that took place along that long pathway.
One such anthropogenic “climate change” cycle appears evident in the hominid fossil record:
http://www.manfredmudelsee.com/publ/pdf/Trends-rhythms-and-events-in-Plio-Pleistocene-African-climate.pdf
“An examination of the fossil record indicates that the key junctures in hominin evolution reported nowadays at 2.6, 1.8 and 1 Ma coincide with 400 kyr eccentricity maxima, which suggests that periods with enhanced speciation and extinction events coincided with periods of maximum climate variability on high moisture levels.”
As we are at an eccentricity minimum now, we are about 200kyrs away for our next possible hardware upgrade. When I see things like this, which seem an almost everyday occurrence now, I sincerely wonder if we will make it.
JEM says:
December 13, 2011 at 2:30 pm
“I’m sorry, but we need to see the NEXT minute. We need to see her response to his bafflegab, or transcripts of testimony, or other corroborating details that indicate that she bought into this.”
Oops! I went to Wizbang and there is video of her agreeing with Donziger. In my experience, genuine lawyers do not do the sort of thing Donziger is doing on video. When discussing things that stink they never refer to the stink or its causes. If I had been in the lady’s shoes, I would have suspected that he was leading me on and not for a good reason.
@JEM
@Ben U.
For sure one needs to know happened after these clips, what data actually was submitted and what claims were actually made etc.
But I disagree that Maest does not show complicity in wrongdoing in these brief vids, unless reversed or contradicted by later behavior and evidence. The ONLY correct response to a lawyer (or anyone) telling you how you can fake the data and the case is immediate outrage, and some version of a declaration that “as scientist and an ethical person I can never do what you are suggesting!”
Furthermore, Doniger needed to be taken to task immediately for his expressed willingness to ignore and subvert actual scientific data. There should be a serious case against him in terms of legal/bar ethics and professional responsibility, not to mention possible criminal liability.
But for Maest, she sure seemed to me like she was acquiescing not objecting. One has to compare with what was done later, but certainly serious legal ethics violations and criminal malfeasance (by the plaintiff team) has been asserted by Chevron/Texaco since those videos were made. Enough was shown to tell me anyway that Maest and Doniger should never be trusted in professional capacities by anyone who was not also dishonest.
Wow! It’s hard enough to believe they’d talk like this OFF camera.
It’s “Gradient”. ‘course you’ll need another million buck grant to use that word. Until then I’d stick to “that slopey thing the ground does”.
This is a bit OT, but, it is about scientific ethics:
I noted RC rambling on about AGU 2011, so I check it out on the web. I see Peter Gleick is chairman of an ethics task force, I know he’s one of those “denier” guys but that’s about it, so I google him and find an article he wrote on huffpo ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/whitewashing-scientific-m_b_842022.html ) where he absolutely berates some activists: [bold mine] “Equally egregious, Park Service employees withheld or selectively excluded scientific evidence that they knew contradicted their claims, even after requests by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and external scientists seeking to independently review their claims.” and then concludes ” Indeed, the Frost Report itself is evidence that scientific misconduct will be excused, whitewashed, minimized, and swept under the rug – already the Report is being used by some to claim victory on a policy battlefield where the real loser is the integrity of science.”, so I’m thinking why can’t he see these same activities among climate scientists. So I e-mail search for Gleick and sure enough e-mail # 0838 ( http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0838.txt&search=Gleick ) there he is colluding with the team to withhold information from McIntyre, an external scientists seeking to independently review their claims. He says: “ Yes, excellent point. This should be what we do. Further, we can point out that we’ve bent over backward here and provided more than typically necessary in order to satisfy persistent but inappropriate demands.” in reply to Linda Mearns saying “ My point about the code is still that ‘providing the code’ can be interpreted alot of ways. I have thought about this, and imagined if in one of my larger and more complex projects, I was asked to provide all code. I could do that just by sending the pieces with a summary file explaining what each piece was used for. It still theoretically allows someone to see how coding was done. And I do think that is a far sight easier than providing stuff that can be run, etc. I am suggesting that one could do the minimum. Then the point is, one isn’t faced with garish headlines about ‘refusal to provide code’. I think it is harder to come up with a garish headline about ‘refusal to provide completely documented
code with appropriate readme files and handholding for running it’.”
This is scientific ethics? Hypocrisy at it’s finest.
BTW: AGU 2011: http://www.agu.org/meetings/pdf/2011_FM_Program_Book.pdf
Ethics Task Force page 12. John Cook is on page 20, a panel on Communicating Science (LOL)
But hold on a minute. Surely taking a bit of data that supports your argument and smearing over a much larger area is accepted practice in climate science? If a top science publication accepts this practice who are we lesser mortals to disagree.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/02/odonnell-et-al-2010-refutes-steig-et-al-2009/
In a perfect world, we would eventually see Maest, [snip] and scores of other enviro-terrorists in adjoining cells. But, alas, it is probably not to be…
Come on now.
Just another day’s work in support of “The Cause”.
James Sexton,
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My apologies for citing wikipedia, but they are correct in this instance.
I am currently a plaintiff in a RICO suit. I assure you there are many such civil cases.
Do we really need the next minute? Did she quit working with the attorney who is making things up? Did she testify? What did she say? These are more important than trying to interpret what “uh huh” means, no??
Just so you don’t think this is a one-off.
This is now big business!
The text:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/breaking-activist-green-lawyers-billing-u-s-millions-in-fraudulent-attorney-fees/?singlepage=true
The video:
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=174&load=3206
Reminds me of the Economics Prof at UW Madison in the early 70’s who came back from giving congressional testimony in DC yuking it up because they had misled congress about the economic impacts of an oil spill in Texas. I remember it as Galveston Bay, but could be wrong.
It seems that when asked if there measurable economic impacts due to the spill they had honestly answered “Yes, quite significant in fact” but intentionally failed to mention that the measurable impacts were, after a short recovery period, positive. Apparently once the initial toxicity dropped off all those hydrocarbons acted as fertilizer and increased productivity.
The man was lying by omission and laughing about it, was a real eye-opener for me.
One of the few places where rats swim toward a sinking ship !!!
Much as I’d love to see every Carbon Cultist gone from the earth, I’m suspicious of that video. The woman’s voice is entirely too clear and loud compared to the others, and the lip-syncing is less than perfect. Sounds like the audio equivalent of a Photoshop job to me, and I do know a few things about waveform editing.
It’s OK to lie if the ’cause’ is right.
Let’s hope the Judge puts them straight on their erroneous thinking…and then puts them straight in the Penn State…ooops sorry silly me ‘the State Pen.’
What’s the official ranking – is it lawyers or climatologists who are the least scrupulous?
Realtors and car salesmen are positively saintly by comparison.
Environmentalists everywhere should have a sinking feeling about now.
Wow, this Donziger character seems like quite the psychopath….
I should also mention that Chevron’s channel devoted to this case has some more good videos.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TexacoEcuador
FIRST KILL ALL THE LAWYERS.
Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2
Very unprofessional of them to speak on camera like that! /sarc.
Lawyers, by trade, cannot be ethical people. Especially if there is no punishment for the losing side. Lying is not recommended, but serious stretching of the truth runs rampant in the legal systems. Whoever comes across as most convincing to the court or the jury is usually the winner. Effectively, the attorney who is the best actor wins. Sad but true.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q7mjoxHzm4&w=640&h=360]
It’s all about the big green for Big Green. Always has been. The WWF selling carbon credits, Al Gore and his stock options, and GreenPeace and it’s non-disclosure of its funding.
It’s nothing more than a Shake Down, enabled by useful idiots.
It’s stuff like this that’s the reason I never joined APEGGA.
Yep. Corrupt, greedy, and stupid. Pretty much sums up today’s environmental movement.
Well…I’m sure (ahem) that they aren’t ALL (cough) like this (ahem, cough)…
“Boulder, Colo.-based Stratus Consulting, a long-term contractor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies, is gathering and analyzing data concerning the Gulf of Mexico spill.”
So…is NOAA still doing business with these people???
Jesse,
“Yutes” is the classic line from that clip, but my pronunciation highlight is “high-ay-nus”.
Addtional OT factoid, the porky witness is Maury Chaykin, who went on to play the private detective Nero Wolfe in the A&E series.
Now…back to our regular programming…
This seems fairly typical of the “environmental” movement to date, all the way from the people involved with the science to the people who manipulate opinion.
They are disgusting and despicable. These people are not the exception. As we have learned in climategate, they are typical.
JEM says: “I’m sorry, but we need to see the NEXT minute. We need to see her response to his bafflegab, or transcripts of testimony, or other corroborating details that indicate that she bought into this…”
You mean, the part where she says, “But that would be wrong?”
jeez says:
December 13, 2011 at 4:16 pm
James Sexton,
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia …….
======================================
I’m sad and angry about this…………….. if RICO applies, then criminal charges must be drawn!
I had given up on our legislative body. They are all unprincipled scumbags. I had given up on the executive branch. They are scumbags that can’t be part of the legislative branch. I held hope that the judicial branch would carry the day.
It can not be that people have violated RICO and not be in violation of federal law. In which case, the remedy is prison, if not the death penalty.
Thomas Jefferson was correct about periodicity. Corrupted bastards…….
OMFG,
and the like…
Please be careful what you write. RICO – Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Incredibly, I once spent a year as racketeer (according to the courts). Now I’m just another person. I sort of miss the racketeer thing; it was an interesting conversation starter. At the time I sent the “Cousin Vinny” video to my attorneys as a primer on our forthcoming court date. They didn’t see the humor.
““Crude” is available on Netflix streaming. See if the next minute is shown.”
My bad. These are outtakes from “Crude”, so by definition the next minute is not in the documentary. The documentary edited out the good stuff.
These guys could play Dumb and Dumber… Well, I guess they did.
What, the Rico Defendants thought commissioning “Crude” would ~”further their criminal enterprise”? Were they trying to supplant “Che’s” success in t-shirt sales?
The IPPC, ACORN and OWS can’t compare to Donziger yet, but the thought is there. Check out the Chevron pleading as above:
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/ecuador/StampedComplaint.pdf
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/ecuador/StampedComplaint.pdf
JPeden;
Thanks for that link. Just the table of contents is breathtaking!
James Lovelock said (I’m paraphrasing) that something like 80% of the ozone measurements were either faked or incompletely done. The ATF discussed using “Fast and Furious” to achieve a new level of gun control (wonder if this is what Obama meant when he said he was working on gun control “under the radar”).
I’m not surprised at this (but glad it was posted).
And I wouldn’t be surprised if some day, we find out that most of those major lawsuits against Walmart were mostly bogus and designed to pressure Walmart to either cave into union demands (so the DNC get’s their ‘cut’) or to pressure Walmart to donate to left wing politicians and /or causes.
“They are disgusting and despicable. These people are not the exception. As we have learned in climategate, they are typical.”
They are exceptional in their ineptitude. Most of them are probably much brighter than this, which is no comfort.
I wish Chevron great success in this suit! I have long held that collusion by our AGW fanatics is addressable by RICO lawsuit. Same goes for the incestuous socialist cronyism surrounding taxpayer guaranteed Billion dollar loans to already failed companies like Solydra who are run by money launderers for highly placed politicians ‘that believe in wealth redistribution’!.
If that ain’t ‘Racketeering’, What The Hell Is??!!
Actually he didn’t suggest making anything up; he said take the existing *known* contamination and extrapolate per theory to 300 meters taking into account the topographical changes. Not quite as bad as using cherry-picking 1998 as the starting point for global temperature graph or comparison.
In Australia coaching a witness is a criminal offense but it is hard to prove unless there is good evidence such as this video. I would have thought that the US Justice Department would need to take action.
I’ve worked with lawyers on intellectual property disputes. While I had them laughing, with the ‘mute’ button in on, while the other party stews in some unwelcome information, I’ve never seen anything like this sort of unethical and possibly illegal.
Cementafriend; I doubt that the US DOJ would do anything to help Chevron.
“Not quite as bad as using cherry-picking 1998 as the starting point for global temperature graph or comparison”
Probably depends in what you are trying to show. 1998 is valid for North America because that is when temperatures started a fairly linear decline. 2004 is better if you are talking global because that is when the overall downtrend started, when the trend in sea level rise flattened (sea levels in most of 2011 were below the 2004 peak) and when ocean heat content began to level out. I use 1975-2004 as the late 20th century warming period and 1911-1942 as the early 20th century warming period. The trends are very close in both periods. Close enough that statistically speaking they are nearly identical. Global temperature trends since 2004 in all data sets are in decline. But statistically speaking, there’s been no global warming since 1998 globally in land surface measurements. That wa really the last year of the late 20th century warming.
[SNIP: Not really appropriate, don’t you think? -REP]
Racketeering, the art of the shake down.
Launch a series of automatic legal challenges when a company wishes to set up a factory/oil extraction/coal mine etc by making up supposed environmental threats. It has become a giant industry since the tactic became the favoured vehicle of big eco, its a real rent payer for them. Its so easy to do and to get away with, the burden of proof lays with the company that their activities will not cause changes to the environment.
Usually the Mark(company) will pay up out of court to avoid delays, and this is where big eco gets paid again and again. Like street con artists they can expect a payout once every three or four shake downs. What really changed the playing field and tipped the odds in the favour of big eco was the adoption of tough environmental laws in the USA and this was no accident. How many industries have fled the USA? How many jobs have disappeared?
For every company/corporation that paid into the big eco racket you can estimate that three pulled out and took jobs with them, took wealth overseas. Over the decades as the Sierra clubsters got rich and powerful they were instrumental in destroying millions of industrial jobs, perhaps they thought it was a small price to pay in order to enrich themselves or maybe the prize of destroying the great Satan was just too tempting. At the end of the day when its all about money and power and a small group of people who found a way to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
@Kevin O’Neill
re: “making stuff up”
as I understand it their ‘science’ showed only contamination right at the site (“under the pits” as they said) and NOT 300 yards away…. so whether they call it a “theory” or whatever, to assert anything other than what the actual data shows is indeed “making stuff up”
The issue was whether Chevron/Texaco was responsible for any contamination outside of the actual site. If there was not actual contamination beyond the site (which would justify only cleanup at the site), then seeking billions of dollars in “damages” under some bogus “theory” is indeed making it up.
@Cassandra King
Yes, although in this case the ‘shakedown’ was over issues from decades ago, before Chevron even owned the subsidiary in question. As I understand it there had been a complete legal settlement in the late 70s, before Chevron had any involvement at all. Then, with the prospect of “deep pockets” and the corrupt Ecuadoran “justice system” plus rabid activist groups of idiots, this shakedown was about getting vast penalties/damages for vast (unsupported) claims about contamination in the past.
As the scumbag lawyer says in one of the vids, when you can get 1,000 angry ppl outside a courthouse you can get what you want in Ecuador, facts and science be damned.
I well recall voicing the opinion in a well-researched paper more than a decade ago that information about pollution levels in London was being misrepresented and exaggerated by green activists. That published opinion in the newspapers elicited threats of personal violence and death. Green “Believers”, although many at heart are well-meaning, are not necessarily nice people and are certainly rarely tolerant and open to debate.
When I first saw the “hockey stick” I was convinced that there was a real problem that should be addressed. I began some exploration starting with the Professor David MacKay’s book Sustainable energy without the hot air. The professor is now well embroiled in the the alarmist camp being the scientific advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. Sadly he seems to have been forced to forget his stance of using as he says “numbers not adjectives”, because he previously debunked all the common assertions about the efficacy of renewable energy. Although he believes that CO2 is contributing significantly to “Global Warming / Climate Change”, he had at long last produced a great deal of quantified common sense on the subject of the efficacy of renewable energy.
This lead me on to a wider exploration of the question of Man-made Climate Change / Anthropogenic Global Warming / Catastrophic Climate Change, etc.
As my exploration has progressed my views have become increasingly sceptical about the promotion of probably dubious science, the evasion of proper “scientific methods” and the political agendas that have invested so much into confirming the assertion. So, from being a credulous Believer I have become a Sceptic and thus a “Denier”.
I would like to think that this is a common path for anyone who really thinks a bit about what has going on around the in relation to “Climate Catastrophe’.
A clear example of the way these people think.
“The end justifies the means”.
Ultimately character counts.
Q. What is a good term for a scientist, who really isn’t a scientist, as they rely on other than empirical evidence, when making or proving a theory. For that matter, any scientific case that relies on conjecture (models)?
A. A “Hanson”.
I am a scientist who regularly give expert testimony on environmental matters in my chosen are of expertise. I cannot believe what I have just seen. When I am badgered by an attorney to push a given line that fits with the attorney’s view, I usually tell them to take a hike. My testimony is mine, and if they dont like it then they would be better advised to find someone else who can tell it like they want it. Astounding stuff, and make me both ashamed of the science profession and very much more sceptical of others who give testimony than I used to be. Bloody disgraceful
Having watched the applicable chunks of video and read most of Chevron’s complaint…if even 10% of what’s in there is true there should be a number of former lawyers and former scientists pounding the pavement.
The scary part, of course, is that if it weren’t for the video these sleazeballs might actually have pulled something off.
I’ve attended two of Chevron’s recent shareholder meetings. I blogged about the 2011 meeting on Ricochet under “Gramps” but a Ricochet server seems to be down so I can’t retrieve it. I met the Atossa Soltani mentioned in Chevron’s complaint. She was organizing the group of “shareholders” asking hostile questions of the CEO. I wish Chevron luck in their lawsuit. This bunch deserves a good thrashing.
Do we have an extradition treaty with Ecuador? Are their jails up to Guantanamo standards?
dp says:
December 13, 2011 at 9:28 pm
[SNIP: Not really appropriate, don’t you think? -REP]
Well, yes, it was. It was a real world way to make the point that egregious choices have egregious outcomes. Real life has an ugly side that even the high bred need to be aware of.
I don’t blame you for cutting it, of course, but can’t think of a nicer way to make the point, unfortunately. It is what it is.
Wow.
Without this video these conspirators would have been claiming that this lawsuit was the Big Oil Conspiracy persecuting them because they were battling AGW, or something.
Vile. In a civilised world, where litigation was based on evidence, this coming out would make the name of Maest 100% untouchable for the foreseeable future. In the world we actually inhabit, unfortunately, it’s most likely she will remain not only “a managing scientist at Straus Consulting”, but also “the go to expert on all things groundwater”. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, we’ll see an “investigation” in which she is “completely exonerated” – seems to be the usual way of dealing with these trifling embarrassments (© UEA et al).
GroundWaterGate
A couple of quotes from the British TV series Yes Minister sum up the situation very aptly:
“No one really understands the true nature of fawning servility until he sees an academic who has glimpsed the prospect of money or personal publicity.”
“The surprising things about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is.”
“We have enough, to get money, to win.”
That’s quite the quotable quote. Sadly sums up too much of the eco-crisis industry.
I am amused that the defendants felt such hubris that they allowed themselves to be candid in front of cameras. This speaks to bad judgement and a disconnect from reality, ethics, and law, that is truly jaw dropping. When this kind of money is at stake, you don’t do candids EVEN IF YOU ARE PURE AS DRIVEN.
You keep your mouth shut.
Environmental terrorism?
We have the same in the UK. The elite with elite lawyers, manipulate government policy to get rich. This is why the UK Law Society lost its power of self-discipline [planning corruption, people trafficking by corrupt solicitors] and a NewsCorp employee did the PR for CRU when it was being whitewashed in the Oxburgh enquiry.
Don’t want all that investment in falsifying data to get carbon trading in place to fall by the wayside, do we!
What has happened in the US is that the scientists have in effect gobn freelance and were dumb enough and arrogant enough to video themselves doing it.
No crooked lawyer would do that, surely, but maybe they thought themselves immune? CP, Fabian, Marxist,? The wax on the wings has melted.
It’s habituation. Jane Goodall used it to show the amazing behavior of primates.
Ha! I found her (GIYF) explaining what she did:
http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp-central-habituation
I’m thinking that the unreleased FOIA leaked e-mails contain such incriminating evidence. We may never get to read them. GK
For people doubting the veracity of this case, check the Chevron link to the filings. This case has been going on for a few years and discovering plenty of evidence for fraud, collusion and corruption. Chevron discovered that the supposedly independent report commissioned for the Ecuador judge was written by Donziger’s team, then ‘peer reviewed’ by his team. This didn’t stop Pablo Fajardo winning a Goldman Environmental Prize, or a CNN Hero award, or the Crude movie winning a slew of documentary awards. Even though they seem to have missed the real story discovered in the outtakes, which are probably enough for a sequel. Crude 2- The Shakedown. Might even be some books, like Merchants of Extortion.
Hopefully Maest is an isolated case though and there’s no cause for concern regarding other activities by Stratus employees, such as their VP Joel Smith’s work as an LA on IPCC WG2.
“Ann S. Maest, PhD, of Buka Environmental, is an aqueous geochemist specializing in the fate and transport of contaminants…”
http://www.pebblescience.org/pdfs/ComparisonsReportFinal.pdf
We look around us in the world.
We see politicians, bureaucrats, stockholders, shareholders, public servants, etc. grafting (and being caught), cheating (and being caught), lying (and being caught), stealing (and being caught), corrupting (and being caught), etc. and mostly getting away with weak punishment (even if they get caught) such as suspension on full pay, reprimands, fines, etc.
Pretty soon some folks start to think, “Hey, if them why, not me?” and so the corruption of morals spreads downward from those who should be setting the best example.
Would I trust someone who wears sunglasses all the time? (based on her wearing them during what appears to be a nice little expenses paid soiree with colleagues). Nice (Piece of) work, if you can get it. Or “to get money” for it.
Looks more like the garden variety NGO training video on tactical deployment of monetary extraction and getting paid doing it by conspiracy to cheat and scheme.
Its science Jim, but not as we know it.
This is a smoking gun, they should aall get the bullet,today.
I have worked with lawyers before and they have always played it straight down the line. They of all people know the penalties for stepping outside the law.
This isn’t biassing a narrative to suit your case. This is coaching a witness in an outright lie.
Still, here’s one truth they can’t cover up – its snowing in South West England today. Didn’t Team AGW tell us we’d never see snow in England again?
Ahh, none of you rational folk understand do you.
The environmentalist here is right, just and principled, because he CARES, and unless you CARE you will always be wrong. The CAUSE justifies everything, because they CARE.
It reminded me of the Wannsee conference in 1942, where everyone ‘CARED’, but everyone was totally disconnected from reality.
.
The comment above comparing this lawyer to Realtors was on the mark. For 12 years or so I was a real estate salesperson and associate broker, as well as an instructor of real estate principles and broker courses. Of course there are dishonest (and honest) real estate people, and of course temptation to shade things is everywhere. However, unlike the subject of the current discussion, in a real estate transaction there is a real property, which (in the US at least) the buyer has the right to examine in detail or have professionally inspected, and which he will occupy or rent out once closing has occurred. After the sale, any flaws found by the buyer and deliberately withheld by the seller will likely be noticed and can be the subject of legal action, from rescission of the sale (and restitution of the price and costs) to suits to prison time. The case under discussion here has its realities, too; but they are so far away, so nebulous, so subject to dispute and to shading or concealment of evidence, that a mere real estate case is straightforward and easy by comparison.
Alex Heyworth says:
December 13, 2011 at 11:34 pm
“The surprising things about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is.”
George Bernard Shaw once asked a lady if she would go to bed with him for a million dollars. After humming and hawing for a while, she agreed. Then he asked if she would go to bed with him for two dollars. She was extremely upset and asked him who he thought she was. He answered: “We have already established that. Now it is a matter of determining the price!”
To an honest person this behaviour by a scientist is beyond the pail. One can only hope that chevron has the balls to nail these obsequious fools or useful idiots in a court of law to regain the lost monies and future incomes denied.
Some time in a cell with Bubba would give then an entirely new aspect of the real world.
Since nobody else said it: groundwatergate?
Pretty sure we can say these criminals *are* organized.
Stuck on Stupid, but organized.
YouTube is vexatious.
There, that should fix it.
[nope . . not really . . kb]
Bill says on December 13, 2011 at 3:11 pm:
Which I thought a wonderful metaphor; to which I feel compelled to add (with your permission Bill): “…the high moral ground having been eroded by the rising sea of cynicism and swept away on a tide of corruption”
wayne says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Yep! Boulder Colorado. Now why does that small town keep coming up over and over and over again
NCAR
http://ncar.ucar.edu/
Nobody has mentioned the potential damage this does not just to the so-called science in “climate science,” but to the National Acadamy of Sciences itself. Here many of us have been speaking of a rigged game, noting how easy it is for once reputable organizations to become co-opted by activism, and now there’s cold hard proof that such a thing can, and does, occur, even on the loftiest of perches. How many other notable cases of extortion in the name of the environment (or heaven forbid, “the children”) have been likewise corrupted by such malfeasance?
One has to wonder to whom we have handed the reigns of “scientific authority.”
Mark
Look who is in the movie “growthbusters” Dr. Ann Maest top right. This marxist/eco-nazi propaganda movie. http://www.growthbusters.org/
rk says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:44 pm
http://www.chevron.com/documents/Pdf/Ecuador/AmendedComplaint.pdf
here is the entire complaint against these people. Maest is listed as a defendant along with Strauss Consulting. I skipped around in the doc, and it looked like some people (other experts) ran away from this whole thing…telling Donzinger that they didn’t want anything to do with his suit. I think those would be the good guys. Looks like Maest et al. stayed with him to the bitter end.
—————
I’ve read through the first 60 pages (out of 231!), which is about all I have stomach for. I think there is considerable merit to Dick’s (the butcher) suggestion in Shakepeare’s Henry VI, Part 2:
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
As much bad press as the radical environmentalists get here on WUWT, the lawyers are far, far worse. The practices outlined in the complaint were no doubt not original with the Chevron (TexPet) case in Ecuador, but have been practiced for years. Trial lawyers are the major sponsors of junk science.
This page in wikipedia is worth a read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
Could this same group be connected to the attempts to halt fraking due to fears over groundwater contamination?
Mydogsgotnonose says:
December 13, 2011 at 11:39 pm
“What has happened in the US is that the scientists have in effect gobn freelance and were dumb enough and arrogant enough to video themselves doing it.”
This is commonplace in academia. It happens even in teaching hospitals. Why? Two parts. One is that academics are by nature and culture arrogant. Laws are for the great unwashed who do not understand the higher wisdom. Two is ignorance. Having no experience of the world of business, they have no clue when they do something illegal such as advise patients to commit fraud against their insurance companies. Donziger strikes me as someone who has not worked “in harness” for a legal team whose bread and butter is serving traditional businesses.
Could someone else have the sixth claim used against them?
Unjust Enrichment.
I can think of a few climate scientist that have got unjustly rich (Million dollar grants for a start) off there claims.
Video’s also at http://chevrontoxico.com/ got this link from the court document.
Looks like the extrapolation in the clip is exactly analogous to that used in Steig 09 to smear the warming trend for the West Antarctic peninsula across the whole continent. Any chance of a RICO against Dr “matlab” Steig?
I don’t understand. Did that guy not know a video camera was taping the conversation? This looks like a Project Veritas clip only I don’t see James O’Keefe’s name anywhere.
“Boulder, Colo.-based Stratus Consulting, a long-term contractor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies,</b?
So the scumbags are at the federal trough while giving us this kind of “science” in return. Why am I not really surprised? Always shocked but no longer surprised here……
Pages starting about 140 to around 160.
Wire fraud, ect. all the eliments covered and it names each of the individualy.
Trouble flowing from this case if they win will sink Greenpeace and Earth First.
A quick clarification: Dr. Maest is not a *member* of the National Academy of Sciences. Rather, she’s an appointee who serves on an expert committee convened by the NAS. I recognize that the headline clearly says “appointee”. Nonetheless, it might be good to clarify the difference.
The video is egregious, but the Statement of Claim is like 1000 nailguns working on the coffin.
These people are going down, big time. And so they should.
They are crooks and bloodsuckers. It is extortion on a grand scale. To top it off, they claim to be morally virtuous and doing it to save us all and the planet.
Just one head of the Hydra, however.
I genuinely hope that Chevron nail these people and they go to prison for a long long time. It may make others in similar scams take notice.
Donziger has been driven out of the litigation.
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/News/2011/12_-_December/Can_Ecuadorean_plaintiffs_keep_funding_case_against_Chevron_/
And the scary thing is that they would have gotten away with it had it not been for their own vanity in wanting to have their exploits enshrined in a documentary and an anal retentive documentarian who kept all of the extra footage.
It once again goes back to the Goodfellas syndrome. They were too steeped in this criminal activity that is didn’t seem abnormal anymore, so why not let the cameras roll?
True, but it won’t really matter, since the rest of her career is likely to consist of asking customers “Do you want fries with that?” 😀
Maybe it was noted in a previous post and I missed it, but this fraud and the existence of the outtakes was exposed by the Business and Media Institute in August of 2010. See http://www.mrc.org/bmi/articles/2010/Court_Filings_Show__Minutes_Hero_Donziger_Colluded_with_Ecuadoran_Government_to_Defraud_Chevron.html
The lawyer aspects of this are quite appalling. The only thing that saves her slightly in the least is that this condemning material was taken in a foreign country. But that is for the time being. The problem now is that if she has any testimony at all in any cases against anyone in the past or present, any material that used to be “priveledged” including attourney/client papers is now fully open to discovery and to top that off all of her testimony is going to be (possibly) thrown out “as fruit from the poisoned well” so to speak.
Granted, the way this works is slow and tedious, but the way Conoco put the RICO charges into place really says wonders about where they are going. As I said, the discovery alone will work wonders. These law firms involved obviously now have a choice that is not very good. They can go on a “paper shredding mission” only to lose the case anyway and probably suffer the same consequences and take their chances that way.
Or they can turn it all over and hope their law firm does not suffer. Which is probably the best bet for the law firm, but the “cause” as it is will be in serious trouble. In other words, this is serious.
As boring as the rest of that probably is, the most interesting aspect of this case is going to be the discovery aspect. As Conoco can probably argue that if one witness was compromised (which will probably be proven in discovery) that others will have been too (which will result in more discovery) and as such the dominos could start falling on a number of cases and a number of activists/scientists.
This indeed could be a break worth following. But don’t hold your breath quite yet. If the lawyers were coaching the witnesses or otherwise involved, they would also be part of RICO and could likewise be held liable under that and as such they could also likewise be held accountable and as such the other alternative of missing papers is likely in that case.
I fully expect the discovery procedure in this case to be fraught with lots of issues and “lost documents.” But this is one of those cases when you start to make in-roads and where the person has the money and the motivation to get to the heart of it where the ending is all but pre-determined. It might not end all activism or AGW at all, but it might put some of the more vile ones away in the end, but do not expect it immediatly. Courts are notoriously slow in the first place anyway…and in this case, if the lawyers are part of the mess, well expect lots of time to get to the bottom of it.
Kevin O’Neill says:
December 13, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Actually he didn’t suggest making anything up; he said take the existing *known* contamination and extrapolate per theory to 300 meters taking into account the topographical changes. Not quite as bad as using cherry-picking 1998 as the starting point for global temperature graph or comparison.
Right, just like “extrapolating” away the MWP and the LIA via the shaft of the Hockey Stick wasn’t making things up, eh? But this time even when real data would be available.
Btw, showing the actual record of non-warming from 1998 is not “extrapolating”. But would it be much of a stretch to wonder why you, Donziger, Maest, Obama, Climate Science, Enc., are so opposed to fact , logic, ethics, normal word meanings, and real science?
I have 2 memories on this case not mentioned in the posts i read. I remember it to not have an American team involved on the benefits of the proceeds of a settlement. i was wrong. These extortionists are clearly driving this and it makes sense.
I also remember the contamination came after the property rights were long ago transferred to the local producer. How could they pollute on properties they sold many years ago? This RICO mess I am very familiar with Chevron has much more than a case and they can get trebble damages in some states. I have purchased so much insurance over the years and can’t picture them having an extortion case settlement and the consultants being covered.
My estimate is the case will take over 3 years and cost the extortionists a million a year to defend.
Having used consulting experts in my own legal battles when I worked for the City of Dallas, the above video is one of the things I used to worry about the other side doing when they were trying to make their case. One also has to be very careful in one’s own use of consultants not to get caught up in a form of confirmation bias or to not steer an expert too far.
That the so-called “independent” experts were being used or manipulated by the attorneys or the retained consultant to produce pre-conceived conclusions in this instance is pretty apparent. If that is not witness tampering, I don’t know what is. I have never seen anything quite this flagrant in front of the cameras. A willingness to try to “extrapolate” data that is not there is pretty unethical as well as illegal when done in the judicial process. Now, this consultant Maest doesn’t appear to be agreeing to do this in the clip shown, but it sure looks like she participated in the extrapolation attempt based upon the subsequent clips I’ve seen.
RICO is a pretty extraordinary statute; this might not be the case that American courts take in order to determine whether RICO applies to this kind of activity. But if I were representing Chevron, I’d sure be trying to apply RICO, too. And James Sexton: yes, RICO has a civil component to it as well as a criminal one. Given the current administration, good luck getting anyone in the Justice Department to prosecute under RICO.
Shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Why exactly are we surprised that, given a video of the inner workings of the “environmental movement”, some conclude that this is a “one off” event and not the core activity of a multi billion dollar parasite industry? Hands up everyone who thinks that this doesn’t go on at every strategy meeting of “big green” worldwide?
OK – I have a business plan. Fund my crooked case against some entity with assets. I’ll use your funding to buy the “right answers” in the “right court” using the “right experts” and when we win the case your 10 million investment will be worth 10 billion – do we have a deal? Beats working for a living.
This idea that the “environmental movement” is about saving Whales simply demonstrates the value of a good PR company. It is just another a parasitic industry… Find a target, buy “an expert” to figure out some novel statistical bullshit that correlates A with B and ride the gravy train all the way into the next robbery.
I’m no legal expert but it seems that Chevron have chosen the right path here in using RICO. My understanding is that a guilty verdict applies to anyone in the chain who helped make the original case happen – on a “joint and several liability” basis. Pop Corn at the ready boys and girls.
Shame more of big green doesn’t capture its strategy meetings on video. We could rid ourselves of these parasites in short order.
Here we have a small (we think) group of scammers using bought and paid for “science” in order to loot a few tens of billions from Chevron. We have a much larger group of scammers using the same technique to rob “annexe 1” countries of several Trillion dollars. Now that would be a RICO case to remember.
Then again the UN would never be stupid enough to commit a strategy meeting to paper let alone video. And our favourite “scientists” will have deleted any communications that may harm “the cause”.
I feel sorry for those scientists who still see “science” as a “pure” pursuit. You are, as a profession, just a “midges” away from being hung from the same tree as Wall St swindlers.
At least with Wall Street Swindlers you expect nothing less … shame that given a choice between my beloved “science” and “Wall Street robbers” I would now have to think long and hard before voting for one or the other.
Vitamins in cigarette smoke, hide the decline, fudge your water analysis results… science for sale..get your witness…cheapest witnesses in town … name your conclusions…best prices … more than a thousand “experts” on call…
Man walking on the Moon was probably the most memorable event in my childhood. Where, in forty years, did science go so wrong? As with many in that era I grasped the “future through science and technology” with both hands. How could I know that by 2011 I would gladly see “scientists” hanging from the same tree as Wall Street swindlers. At least they will get a tree though… “environmental” NGO’s will be dealt with “Cambodian style” in my revolution.
I once was in a trial where the judge in giving instructions to the jurors said that they should not believe what the lawyers tell them because they are all born story tellers.
It’s been alluded to above, but Maest is with STRATUS Consulting, not STRAUS Consulting.
(At least I don’t know any of those Stratus players)
What disgusting crap!
Will Andy Revkin take this up? One of the Pielke’s? ……Lady in Red
To quote Blackadder: “The criminal’s vanity always makes them make one tiny but fatal mistake. Theirs was to have their entire conspiracy printed and published in plain manuscript.“
What I don’t get it is why Chevron didn’t fight this in the court at the time. Cross examination of the expert witness is vital to call into question the evidence being presented to the court. Chevron could have made it’s own investigations into the environmental effects of the spill, hired their own experts and examined the plaintiff’s evidence to call out the falsehoods. Half of a successful court case is catching inadmissible evidence and discrediting experts.
They’re a multinational, they have to money to pay for it. Also they probably should have been monitoring the effects of the spill already because, you know, they spilled a whole lot of oil.
Discovery is recovery. GK
OK. I read the entire complaint (less the Appendices) — 165 pages of legalese which could probably be clearly summarized in 20 pages or less. The basic claim is Steven Donziger filed a completely meritless (indeed fraudulent) action in Ecuador against Chevron, as a successor to Texaco, which engaged in oil drilling there (as “TexPet”) together with the Ecuadoran state oil company beginning in 1964 and continuing until 1992, when Petroecuador became the sole owner of all the oil fields and other assets, and sole operator. The complaint alleges that far more environmental damage has been done by Petroecuador operations since 1992 than in all the prior years since 1964 when TexPet was the operating partner.
In late 1994, TexPet, Ecuador and Petroecuador reached a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) regarding the identification and remediation of any environmental damage caused by oil operations while TexPet was the operating partner. Financial responsibility was to be shared by TexPet and Petroecuador, in proportion to their ownership percentages. In 1995 a settlement agreement was reached which detailed all the remediation work and other compensation due, at the conclusion of which TexPet was to be released from any further obligation or responsibility. The remediation was completed in 1998 by a contractor selected by TexPet from a list of acceptable firms supplied by Ecuador, and the parties (TexPet, Petroecuador and Ecuador) executed the “Final Release” in September, 1998. According to the MOU, this was the end of any TexPet obligation.
The complaint alleges the Donziger and others colluded with Ecuadoran government officials, court officials and others to create a sham proceeding in the Ecuador courts, promising them a share of any settlement. Donziger and the other RICO defendants arranged for the appointment of a supposedly “independent” consultant whose report to the court was written entirely by Donziger et. al.
To support this action, Donziger and others made repeated false assertions denying any involvement in the preparation of the supposedly independent report. They enlisted political pressure groups including the Rainforest Action Network, Amazon Watch, and an Ecuadoran organization called “The Front” to stage demonstrations and engage in other “direct actions”. They also colluded with Ecuadoran government officials, including the Attorney General, to bring fraud charges against the TexPet attorneys in Ecuador who had worked on the 1994 MOU and the 1998 Final Release, as a pretext for overturning the 1998 release and re-asserting TexPet (now Chevron’s) liability.
Most of the complaint is a long list (repeated several times) of all the fraudulent activities carried out by the defendants, including multiple charges of perjury, knowingly submitting false court filings and other documents, etc.
Chevron is making 9 claims for relief. On two claims they are asking for treble damages plus reasonable attorneys fees. On the other seven they are asking for “general damages according to proof at trial”, plus appropriate injunctive relief. They are also asking the court to declare the judgement of the Ecuadoran court ($27 Billion) unenforceable due to fraud, conspiracy, perjury, etc., etc.
As I have stated before, I am not an attorney. The complaint is dated April, 2011 and I do not know what if any court sessions have followed this filing, but if Chevron can support the claims, I would be surprised if defendants Donziger et., al did not find themselves long-term residents of Club Fed. They certainly should.
All of this should sound familiar to WUWT readers following the AGW claims.
Those of you searching for the “next” minute to gauge her response are missing the point. The fact that this guy feels confident enough to concoct this story in front of her says enough. Where is her morale outrage. Where are her ethics?
Alan Watt says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:20 pm
OK. I read the entire complaint….
____________________________________
Thanks for the excellent summary.
@Lee
Exactly!! What honest, ethical professional, or human being, never mind a SCIENTIST, could sit there complacently listening to the trial lawyer explain how they can just make up the data based upon a useful “plaintiff’s theory” of the case, and not be appalled and outraged?
The ONLY appropriate response for her was to say immediately “we cannot say that because it would be unethical, dishonest, untrue….”
3×2 says:
December 14, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Why exactly are we surprised….
____________________________
I am not. I can recall a case several years ago where EPA “Scientists” were caught falsifying reports so land owners lost the use of their land. All the scientists received was a lateral shift to a different department.
The blasted “Spotted owl” that shut down a whole industry is another example that comes to mind. It is a minor variation of a very common bird. Sort of like calling red haired humans “endangered”
Here is a report of the EPA falsifying data: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
The problem is “Post Normal Science” where the people believe reality is actually fluid and not concrete and objective. When some one has that perspective then the “CAUSE” is the only important matter and “science” is a tool that can be bent to serve the “CAUSE
This is one of the reasons why arguing with a warmist does not work. To them there is no such thing as objective science.
I read the whole thing. I reads like a great detective story. Couldn’t put it down. Humor, Pathos Hubris. The parallels with Climategate are stunning.
Gail Combs says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:22 am
Alan Watt says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:20 pm
OK. I read the entire complaint….
____________________________________
Thanks for the excellent summary.
—————
Thanks Gail. I enjoy your posts as well. I do have to make one correction however. The actual judgement from the Ecuadoran court was $18.2 billion, not the $27 billion I stated. In the course of the action, Donziger & company kept upping the claims, and the plan all along was to get a judgement that was less than they were demanding, so as to appear like a “bargain”. The initial Cabrera report (from the “indepdendent expert” actually acting under total direction from Donziger) recommended $6 billion. The “review” (also allegedly suborned by the defendants), upped that to $27 billion. A later round of “reviews” ended up at over $100 billion.
In addition to the dreary repetition of the charges, much of this complaint is concerned with establishing (1) the jurisdiction of the court over the named defendants, and (2) the applicability of the RICO statue to the alleged actions of the defendants. As I said, the essence of the charges could be clearly stated in 20 pages max, rather than the 161 pages the complaint used. If the courts are as considerate of time as their are of efficient prose, it could be 5 years before the case actually comes to trial.
Hardy Cross says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:33 am
I read the whole thing. I reads like a great detective story. Couldn’t put it down. …
———–
I worry about you.
What amazes me is that these people videoed it all like some street punks email phone videos of their acts to each other.
I thought that all went out with Watergate (The Nixon scandal).
It’s not on film, but there’s a transcript of a meeting of the EPA’s advisory board in which a scientist is pretty much directly pressured to alter his findings to bolster the EPA’s agenda in proving the dangers of secondhand smoke in its 1993 report. See “The Politicized Science of Tobacco Policy”, Martha Perske, Regulation, No. 3, 1995,