Wait til you hear about Steven Donziger.

Steven is a lawyer who helped Ecuador sue Chevron who was polluting massively. The Ecuadorians won and secured an historic $9.5 billion judgment because it was so egregious. Did that end the matter? No.

Chevron ran to American courts and argued that Donziger helped secure this judgment by committing fraud. I believe the evidence of this was a video showing a minister and Donziger at a social gathering. The court ruled in Chevron's favor. This made the judgment unenforceable in the US.

As part of all this, Chevron wanted Donziger to hand over all communications and electronic devices associated with the Ecuador prosecution. That is of course attorney-client privilege. But the court agreed and Donziger refused.

But it didn't end there. Chevron (through their law firm) lobbied the Department of Justice to criminally prosecure Donziger for this. The DoJ declined.

But it didn't end there either. Chevron asked the court, and they agreed, to appoint Chevron's own law firm to conduct a private criminal prosecution. You might be asking "what is that?" and you'd be right to be confused. It rarely happens but a civil court can pursue a private criminal prosecution.

Donziger was convicted, disbarred and spent years in home detention over this whole thing. The Appeals Court affirmed all this and the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

So does it surprise me that Greenpeac can get hit by a $345M judgment for hurting the feelings of an oil company? No, no it does not.

I'll call you a pdf, put banners on every utility pole where you live, and even set your bicycle on fire. Will it count as I just "hurt your feelings"?

> Chevron ran to American courts and argued that Donziger helped secure this judgment by committing fraud. I believe the evidence of this was a video showing a minister and Donziger at a social gathering. The court ruled in Chevron's favor. This made the judgment unenforceable in the US.

If you're interested in this story, I would encourage you to read the full contents of the ruling in this US case. (https://theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecuador...) It's long but relatively easy reading, and it contains a lot more evidence against Donziger's side of the story than a video of a social gathering. In particular, it seems absolutely unambiguous to me that his team blackmailed one of the Ecuadorian judges into giving him favorable rulings, implementing the theory repeatedly found in his personal notebooks that "the only way the court will respect us is if they fear us".

US truely is a banana republic.