Chevron Witch Trial Yields Bizarre $27 Billion ‘Environmental’ Claim

Chevron oil company is being sued in Ecuador for $27 billion. It’s a big number. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Ecuador in 2008 was $54 billion. So $27 billion is 50% of the GDP of the entire country. And the $27 billion claim is sheer fantasy. The damage claim against Chevron is based on a gigantic scam.

Donald Moncayo (yellow shirt) of the Amazon Defense Coalition (the named financial beneficiary in the case) assisting the court's “independent expert” Richard Cabrera (leaning on tree) during a site inspection.

It goes back a while. Between 1965 and 1990, the old Texaco company developed oil concessions in Ecuador. (Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001, hence Chevron is now in the dock.) Between 1977 and 1990, Ecuador progressively nationalized Texaco assets, and transferred them to the state oil firm, Petroecuador.

In the early 1990s, Texaco and Petroecuador agreed to clean up a number of oil sites. Texaco kept its side of the bargain, and in 1998 the government of Ecuador certified that Texaco successfully cleaned up its share of the operations.

Nonetheless, in 1994 a group of U.S. attorneys sued Texaco in the U.S. They made novel legal claims for “environmental justice.” Eventually, the case was dismissed in the United States and a new case was filed against Chevron in Ecuador.

The Ecuadorean court appointed an “expert witness” to make factual findings and to calculate damages. Turns out that the “expert” is a mining engineer named Richard Cabrera, who has direct financial ties to the plaintiffs and as we learned this week, hidden ties to Petroecuador.

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Tags: Chevron, environmental justice, Petroecuador, Richard Cabrera, Texaco
Posted Feb 11th 2010 at 7:47 am in Environment, Justice/Legal, News | 73614152 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/bwking/2010/02/11/chevron-witch-trial-yields-bizarre-27-billion-environmental-claim/Chevron+Witch+Trial+Yields+Bizarre+%2427+Billion+%27Environmental%27+Claim+2010-02-11+15%3A47%3A39Byron+W.+King

The Left Goes to War Against Science, Surrenders on Terror

Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Leftists remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies.

As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, leftists seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives).

Conversely, leftists play “hardball” when their opponents are not terrorists or criminals, but instead, American businesses and industries.   One such example is the left’s battle against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used for more than a half century to make plastics more durable.

Though clearly less consequential than the war on terror, the Left’s war on BPA serves as a microcosm of the larger attempt to use “junk science” and litigation to redistribute wealth from job-producing American industries into the hands of trial lawyers and liberal special interest groups.

In this regard, the Left’s attempts are reminiscent of their past battle against the insecticide DDT. In the 1960s, many developing nation’s had nearly wiped out malaria, but it came back after DDT was banned.  It did not matter that DDT was harmless to humans – and actually saved lives — the Left attacked it, ultimately causing 50 million preventable deaths.

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Tags: Bisphenol A, BPA, Christmas terror attack, criminal prosecution, DDT
Posted Jan 5th 2010 at 10:19 am in Culture, Defense, Environment, News, Politics, Technology | 5553856 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kblackwell/2010/01/05/the-left-goes-to-war-against-science-surrenders-on-terror/The+Left+Goes+to+War+Against+Science%2C+Surrenders+on+Terror2010-01-05+18%3A19%3A38Ken+Blackwell

Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers

The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today! (more…)

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Tags: Congressional Budget Office, health care reform, liability reform, medical malpractice, Nancy Pelosi
Posted Oct 30th 2009 at 12:17 pm in Congress, Healthcare | 23042644 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2009/10/30/pelosi-health-care-bill-blows-a-kiss-to-trial-lawyers/Pelosi+Health+Care+Bill+Blows+a+Kiss+to+Trial+Lawyers2009-10-30+19%3A17%3A51Capitol++Confidential