With trial attorney Steven Donziger taking his legal campaign to shake down Chevron to Canada, our friend, NRO columnist and Toronto resident Conrad Black, penned a lengthy piece in the National Post, urging Canada’s courts to keep out of the battle. It’s quite a read, and ends:
The Toronto law firms involved are all good firms, and all of them have acted for me at different times over the years, but the acceptance by the Canadian courts of this dubious action where Canada has no possible jurisdiction illustrates above all the self-perpetuating avarice of the international legal cartel. It is not otherwise clear, apart from the call of lucre and imitation, why Donziger is being further enriched and Chevron slightly inconvenienced by extending this vulgar and venomous Hollywood farce into this country. The worthy Alan Lenczner, representing Donziger’s clients, said a few months ago that the evidence of bribery in Ecuador is “very suspect.” I don’t think so, and any honest Canadian lawyers and judges should tread warily in this foreign jungle, no matter what sugar plums of money and publicity are dancing in their heads.
Donziger has fired back, accusing: “Chevron has enlisted none other than convicted felon and former media titan Conrad Black to defend the company in Canada as the rainforest villagers seek to seize company assets to pay for their clean-up. This is not the first time Chevron has stooped to pay a felon to try to undermine the Ecuador judgment.”
Sticks and stones stuff, but nasty too with the bogus payola claim. As is this unsigned attack (one can’t help but wonder if Donziger wrote it). The way this case has rolled out over the past few years shows that Donziger picks up critics and enemies as he goes along, and leaves a trail of busted or harmed companies, like Patton Boggs, in his wake.