Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win It

Barrett (Glock) details a decades-long environmental case between Ecuadorian citizens and the oil-company Chevron that veers from legal drama to bizarre farce. Texaco’s two decades of oil production in the Oriente region of Ecuador resulted in environmental contamination for which they were originally sued by lawyer Steven Donziger and others in a 1993 class-action lawsuit. In the following decade, Texaco was taken over by Chevron, the case was dismissed in the U.S. courts, and a trial began in Ecuador. Both Chevron’s and Donziger’s tactics led Barrett to describe the trial as a “kidney-punching, shin-kicking contest.” Chevron paid a third party to concoct a bribery scheme involving Donziger and the judge, while Donziger arranged for the writing of the neutral expert’s testimony and actually attempted to block oil-spill clean-up efforts. In 2011, an Ecuadorian judgment ruled against Chevron for a whopping $18.2 billion, and Donziger was indicted in New York under the civil provisions of the RICO law. The Ecuadorian victory, however, “did not get any oil cleaned up or any sick children treated.” In a story possessing “no shortage of knaves and villains,” Barrett skillfully weighs the ethics of both Donziger and Chevron and finds them wanting. (Oct.)