A U.S. Judge Let a Private Law Firm Prosecute the Lawyer Who Won a $9.5 Billion Pollution Verdict Against Chevron. That Firm Had Represented Chevron as a Client Three Years Earlier.

From 1964 to 1992, Texaco was the sole operator of oil concessions covering roughly 1,500 square miles of Ecuador's Lago Agrio region, in the heart of the Amazon. Plaintiffs' attorneys say the company discharged an estimated 16 to 18.5 billion gallons of "produced water" and drilling waste into hundreds of unlined pits and jungle waterways, at peak dumping close to 4 million gallons of toxic wastewater a day. Local Indigenous and campesino communities have long linked the contamination to elevated rates of cancer, miscarriage, and skin and respiratory disease, though causation remains scientifically and legally disputed to this day.

The lawsuit those communities filed took three decades to produce a judgment, and when it finally did — 9.5 billion dollars, upheld by Ecuador's highest court — the company found itself with no assets left in the country to seize. So instead of paying, Chevron sued the plaintiffs' American lawyer for racketeering. A federal judge in New York agreed the underlying verdict was fraudulent. And when the U.S. Attorney's office declined to bring criminal charges over what came next, that same judge appointed a private law firm to prosecute the lawyer himself — a firm that, records would later show, had represented Chevron as a client just three years earlier.

The Spill

The pollution claims center on more than 350 well sites built during Texaco's operatorship, before Chevron acquired the company — and its liabilities — in 2001. Plaintiffs allege the unlined waste pits were standard operating practice, not an accident, and that the resulting contamination of soil and groundwater persisted for decades after Texaco left. Chevron has consistently disputed the scale and attribution of the harm, arguing that Ecuador's state oil company, Petroecuador, took over the fields in 1992 and bears responsibility for any contamination since.

• ~1,500 square miles of Amazon rainforest covered by the concession
• 350+ well sites across the region
• 16–18.5 billion gallons of produced water and drilling waste, per plaintiffs' estimates
• ~4 million gallons of toxic wastewater discharged daily at peak operations

The Judgment

Ecuadorian villagers and Indigenous groups first sued Texaco in New York in 1993, in a case called Aguinda v. Texaco. U.S. courts dismissed it on forum non conveniens grounds — ruling, in effect, that Ecuador was the proper venue — and the case was refiled there. On February 14, 2011, a court in Lago Agrio ordered Chevron to pay approximately 18 billion dollars. Ecuador's National Court of Justice affirmed the judgment in 2013, reducing it to roughly 9.5 billion dollars. Chevron, which had already withdrawn its assets from Ecuador, refused to pay and declared it would fight the judgment "until hell freezes over."

The Fraud Finding

Rather than defend against enforcement in Ecuador, Chevron went on the offensive in the United States, suing the plaintiffs' lead American lawyer, Steven Donziger, under the federal RICO statute. On March 4, 2014, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York found that the Ecuadorian judgment had been procured through fraud, including bribery of an Ecuadorian judge and the ghostwriting of portions of the ruling. Kaplan declared the judgment unenforceable in the United States. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed his decision on August 8, 2016. Donziger has denied the ghostwriting and bribery allegations were his doing and maintains the underlying pollution findings were sound regardless of any procedural taint. In 2018, he was disbarred in Washington, D.C. for professional misconduct.

The Prosecution

Judge Kaplan later held Donziger in civil contempt for refusing to surrender his laptop and cell phone during post-judgment discovery. When the SDNY U.S. Attorney's office declined to pursue criminal contempt charges over the same conduct, Kaplan took an unusual step in August 2019: he appointed a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute Donziger himself, and hand-picked the judge, Loretta Preska, to preside.

• 787+ days under pretrial house arrest, roughly 993 days in some form of detention according to reporting
• July 2021: convicted of criminal contempt in a bench trial, with no jury
• October 2021: sentenced to six months in prison
• 2023: the U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear his appeal

The Conflict

Seward & Kissel had represented Chevron as a client as recently as 2018 — one year before Judge Kaplan appointed the firm to prosecute Chevron's chief adversary. Donziger's defense raised the conflict directly, arguing a firm that had billed Chevron for legal work should not be entrusted with prosecuting the man Chevron had spent a decade trying to discredit. The arrangement drew criticism well beyond Donziger's own legal team.

• February 2021: roughly 300 law students across about 50 law schools boycott Seward & Kissel recruiting over the prosecution
• September 2021: the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calls Donziger's detention illegal, saying it left members "appalled," and suggests it may be retaliatory
• Dozens of members of Congress and more than 50 rights groups — including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Amazon Watch — write letters urging clemency

Seward & Kissel has maintained the prosecution was conducted properly and within the bounds of its court appointment. Chevron has said it was not a party to the contempt case and bears no responsibility for how it was prosecuted.

The Aftermath

As of early 2025, President Biden had not pardoned or commuted Donziger's case despite the volume of appeals on his behalf. Chevron maintains the entire Ecuadorian judgment was the product of a fraudulent scheme Donziger orchestrated, and that Kaplan's findings — affirmed unanimously on appeal — settle the matter. Donziger and his supporters maintain the fraud findings were themselves the product of a one-sided proceeding, financed by a company with far greater resources than any individual defendant, and that his prosecution for a discovery dispute was disproportionate by any normal standard of criminal justice.

The case that began as a question of whether a corporation polluted the Amazon ended with the corporation's opposing lawyer in a jail cell — prosecuted not by the United States government, which declined to bring charges, but by a private law firm the presiding judge personally selected, a firm that had itself represented Chevron as a client. The $9.5 billion pollution verdict never had to survive an American appeal the way Donziger had to survive a contempt trial, without a jury, in a courtroom adjacent to his opponent's own outside counsel.

Filed from public reporting:

• Inside Climate News — "Their Lives Were Ruined by Oil Pollution"
• NPR — "Ecuador Court Fines Chevron In Environmental Case"
• Al Jazeera — "US judge rejects $9bn ruling against Chevron"
• Wikipedia — "Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc."
• Wikipedia — "Steven Donziger"
• The Intercept — "How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything"
• Courthouse News — "Disbarred environmental lawyer sentenced to prison for criminal contempt"
• CNBC — "Supreme Court refuses appeal by lawyer jailed for contempt"
• Common Dreams — "'Appalled' UN Human Rights Experts Urge Immediate Release, Compensation for Steven Donziger"
• Grist — "This attorney took on Chevron. Then Chevron-linked judges and private prosecutors had him locked up."
• Law.com — "Donziger Says Seward & Kissel May Have Chevron-Related Conflicts"