“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.”
This from US Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell, in North Carolina, on arguments by plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Chevron Ecuador environmental damages case that this was just how it was done in Ecuadorian courts. Good article on the background to the case and the subsequent – and quite astonishing – behavior of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, by Roger Parloff in Fortune, “Evidence of Fraud Mounts in Ecuadorian Suit Against Chevron.” Roger Alford, over at Opinio Juris, has some background as well, including a remarkable transcription of the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, in a post from last summer.