Correction, 8/4/14, 5:45 p.m. EST: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect year for Chevron’s Netflix discovery, and the incorrect day for the order to image Steven Donziger’s hard drives. The text has been adjusted to reflect the correct dates, which were March 24, 2010, and Jan. 21, 2011 respectively. We regret the errors.
In 2009 Chevron Corporation was on a path to losing a $9.5 billion judgment in an Amazon courtroom for oil pollution in Ecuador. What the plaintiffs saw as the world’s greatest environmental trial, the company perceived as the world’s greatest litigation fraud. Either way, it had evolved into the world’s most intensive dispute. To expose the truth about the Amazon trial—and to neutralize the Ecuadoreans’ indomitable lawyer, Steven Donziger—Chevron would eventually hire more than 2,000 professionals from 60 law firms.
