Chevron files RICO suit in Ecuador case POLLUTION

** FILE ** Cofan indigenous women stand near an open oil pit in the Sucumbios province in Ecuador's Amazon in this Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 file photo. A court-appointed expert recommended on April 2, 2008 that Chevron Corp. pay up to US$16 billion (10.2 billion) for allegedly polluting Ecuador's Amazon in a class-action suit by 30,000 jungle settlers and Indians. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa) less ** FILE ** Cofan indigenous women stand near an open oil pit in the Sucumbios province in Ecuador's Amazon in this Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 file photo. A court-appointed expert recommended on April 2, 2008 ... more Photo: Dolores Ochoa R., Associated Press Photo: Dolores Ochoa R., Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Chevron files RICO suit in Ecuador case 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Using a law written to prosecute the Mafia, Chevron Corp. on Tuesday filed a racketeering lawsuit against a team of lawyers who have been fighting the company over oil field pollution in Ecuador.

Chevron accused the lawyers - as well as their clients and their spokeswoman - of conspiring to extort up to $113 billion from the oil company, based in San Ramon.

Chevron and the lawyers have been locked in an increasingly bitter, 18-year lawsuit that seeks to hold Chevron accountable for contaminating the soil and water in a swath of northeastern Ecuador. Texaco, bought by Chevron in 2001, drilled for oil there from 1964 to 1992 before turning over operations to state-run Petroecuador.

As a verdict in the marathon lawsuit nears, Chevron has tried to prove corruption among the lawyers and Ecuadoran officials involved in the case.

Last year, Chevron persuaded judges in the United States to grant the company access to many of the lawyers' private documents, arguing that they could provide evidence of fraud.

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Documentary outtakes

Chevron also won access to outtakes from a documentary film about the lawsuit, despite the objections of the filmmaker and many media companies (including Hearst Corp., which owns The Chronicle).

Those outtakes and documents will now provide ammunition for the suit Chevron filed Tuesday, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

"We certainly have extraordinary evidence of misconduct, and we're confident we've got enough to win this case," said Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson.

The plaintiffs' lawyers slammed the new suit as an attempt by Chevron to bleed them of cash and distract the public from evidence of the company's guilt in Ecuador.

"It's corporate bullying at its worst," said Karen Hinton, spokeswoman for the plaintiffs' legal team. Hinton was named as a co-conspirator in the new lawsuit.

"It's a way to choke off any protest of what they've done in Ecuador," she said. "If you're going to criticize Chevron, you'd better be prepared for a legal attack."

Chevron is seeking unspecified damages and legal fees in its suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The company also wants a court declaration that any judgment against Chevron in Ecuador would be the result of fraud, making it unenforceable in the United States.

The defendants include Steven Donziger, former lead lawyer for the plaintiff's team, as well as lawyer Pablo Fajardo and community organizer Luis Yanza. In 2008, Fajardo and Yanza won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for their work on the case.

Congress passed RICO in 1970 as a weapon against the Mafia. Companies have sometimes been the target of civil RICO suits and have occasionally tried to use the law themselves. In December, for example, a federal appeals court reinstated a RICO lawsuit filed by railroad company CSX Transportation against lawyers specializing in asbestos lawsuits.

"The idea was to go after organized crime rings, but if you look at the law on its face, there are a number of situations it might cover that Congress might not have intended," said Sean Hecht, executive director of the Environmental Law Center at UCLA.

He questioned whether Chevron's suit might be a form of SLAPP, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Such suits are designed primarily to apply pressure to the opposing side, rather than to win a judgment.

SLAPP suit?

"I can't judge this as a SLAPP suit, but it looks like it has some of the hallmarks," Hecht said. "It's trying to convince someone to throw in the towel."

Chevron has for years described the case against it in Ecuador as a shakedown. The company now cites documents and film clips obtained in the last year as proof.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the plaintiffs' legal team of ghostwriting an environmental damage report issued by a court expert, Richard Cabrera, who was supposed to be neutral in the case.

In documents obtained by Chevron, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer whose firm had spent $7 million bankrolling the plaintiffs' legal team argued that the team's extensive contacts with Cabrera had "undermined the entire case."

Film clips cited in Chevron's lawsuit also show Donziger describing ways to pressure Ecuadoran court officials.

"We have concluded that we need to do more politically to control the court, to pressure the court," he says in one of the outtakes. "We believe they make decisions based on who they fear the most, not based on what the laws should dictate."

The plaintiffs' legal team maintains that its contacts with Cabrera were allowed under Ecuador's legal system. Donziger's comments, according to the team, were off-the-cuff expressions of frustration with the trial process, not evidence of fraud.