International News

Given U.S. District Judge Richard Kaplan's previous rulings in Chevron's racketeering case against plaintiffs lawyer Steven Donziger and others, it would have been a surprise if the judge granted a motion by Donziger's lawyers at Keker & Van Nest to dismiss the case outright. And indeed, on Monday Kaplan refused to throw out the case--though he did toss related claims of fraud and tortious interference.

Chevron Corporation went to U.S. federal court in Miami on May 4 seeking the records of eight accounts at Banco Pichincha in Ecuador. The oil company maintains that these records could prove that an Ecuadorean geological engineer, who was hired by the court to be an independent expert in the case of Maria Aguinda y Otros vs. Chevron, was bribed by plaintiffs lawyers. Both the expert and the plaintiffs lawyers deny the charge.

"Your honor, we do not urge a rule of corporate impunity here," Kathleen Sullivan of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan told the U.S. Supreme Court at oral argument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. Although Shell's counsel are asking the Court to affirm the Second Circuit's conclusion in Kiobel that corporations can't be held liable under the the Alien Tort Statute, they stress that corporations can still be sued under state law. What they don't stress is that, when those state claims arrive, the defense will try to eviscerate them.