NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) - Disgraced plaintiffs attorney Steven Donziger, who sued a giant oil and gas company and once boasted a multibillion-dollar verdict, was sentenced to six months in prison for contempt of court.
Donziger sued Chevron Corp. and won a $9.5 billion pollution judgment in an Ecuadorian court 10 years ago that the company alleged was secured by pressuring the judiciary. A U.S. federal judge agreed and voided the verdict.
“This has been such a strange situation where you've got Donziger egregiously ginning up all sorts of strange celebrity support from people who are sympathetic to the environmentalist’s cause that he's backing and who are just willing to look the other way in terms of the misconduct on the court that he has committed,” said James Copland, senior fellow and legal policy director at Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank.
“I think it was important for the judge to take a stand on it.”
The federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 bans American businesses and individuals from engaging in bribery with government officers from foreign countries but celebrities such as Susan Sarandon and Marianne Williamson have appeared on television in support of Donziger.
“This is precisely the sort of arrogance that we've seen from this individual, which is why the judge, I think ultimately, has no choice but to put him in prison,” Copland said.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska based the six-month sentence on finding Donziger guilty of defying court orders issued by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in 2014 that required him to turn in his computer and other devices.
“In cases like this where you have an attorney who has flouted the law so aggressively and so unrepentantly in so many ways and really showed up the courts, it's not surprising that he's going to spend some time in prison,” Copland said.
While Donziger plans to appeal, Reuters reported that Preska denied bail.
“I've always said this is a retaliation case designed to punish me for my successful advocacy on behalf of indigenous groups in Ecuador against Chevron and I think it was borne out today,” said Donziger in a video posted on his Twitter page after the sentencing. “We have asked for bail pending appeal. I have a really good appeal that I think, ultimately, will be exonerated but that appeal takes one to two years. It's very clear Judge Preska wants me to serve my six-month sentence immediately so that even if I get exonerated on appeal, I still will have served a sentence for a crime I never committed. It's almost unheard of for someone convicted of a misdemeanor in the United States not to be let out pending his or her appeal.”
Preska sentenced Donziger to prison despite calls from the United Nations and Amnesty International to release him.
"He's relying on foreign courts and other tribunals that have been able to be manipulated and that's the whole gravity of the case here. It's an absurd abuse of process," Copland added. "The entirety of it is emblematic of the way some of these international tort abuses can occur. It's a credit to our federal courts that they've stood so firmly against this sort of pressure and against this sort of machination and really egregious misconduct."
Esquire Magazine featured Donziger earlier this year with a headline stating, "I've Been Targeted With Probably the Most Vicious Corporate Counterattack in American History."
But Copland said it's just another plaintiffs attorney ploy.
"A lot of plaintiffs attorneys have been able to get away with so much for so long that they think they're invincible," he said. "This is just the latest in a long line of folks who've been so aggressive in skirting the edge of propriety for so long that they think they can get away with anything. This is just the latest episode with a foreign twist to it and it's a sad tale of abuse that so many plaintiff's lawyers have been so successful in exploiting our legal system."