Steven Donziger

Steven Robert Donziger (born September 14, 1961) is an American attorney known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc. and other cases in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous people who suffered environmental damage and health problems caused by oil drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field of Ecuador.

The Ecuadorian court awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion ($ in dollars) in damages, which led Chevron to withdraw its assets from Ecuador and launch legal action against Donziger in the US.

Starting in the 1970s, Texaco conducted oil drilling operations in the Amazon in partnership with Ecuador's national oil company, Petroecuador.

In the 1990s Texaco came to a $40 million agreement with Ecuador to clean up some of the resultant pollution, and was released from liability.

Donziger was asked by Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (FDA) to help win compensation for the pollution and health effects caused by oil drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field, a region that became known as the "Amazon Chernobyl".

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991.

After graduating from college, Donziger worked as a journalist.

His first job was in the United Press International bureau in Managua, after which he freelanced in Nicaragua for The Fort Lauderdale News, the Toronto Star, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He also founded Project Due Process which offered legal services to Cubans who arrived in the US in the Mariel boatlift.

After working as a journalist for three years, Donziger went to Harvard Law School.

He graduated from law school in 1991 and worked as a public defender in Washington, D.C. In 1991, he visited Iraq as part of a mission that produced a report on the impact of bombing on civilians during the first Gulf War.

The report was adopted by the United Nations.

He visited Ecuador in 1993, where he says he saw "what honestly looked like an apocalyptic disaster," including children walking barefoot down oil-covered roads and jungle lakes filled with oil.

In 1993, after he visited Ecuador, Donziger and other attorneys brought a class-action lawsuit in New York against Texaco on behalf of over 30,000 farmers and Indigenous people from the Amazon region.

Since the plaintiffs had no money, Donziger, with FDA support, funded the case by selling shares to investors, offering a small part of any eventual settlement.

The lawyers chose to file in New York because at the time Texaco's headquarters were in New York.

The lawsuit charged that Texaco's oil drilling in the Amazon had resulted in massive contamination.

Donziger was the editor of The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission, published in 1996 by Harper Perennial.

The book described the role of media in increasing fear of crime, racial injustice in the criminal justice system and argues against mandatory minimum sentences.

Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and argued that Texaco had cleaned up its area of operations and that its partner, Petroecuador, was responsible for any remaining pollution.

Chevron requested that the case be tried in Ecuador and, in 2002, the US court dismissed the plaintiffs case based on forum non conveniens and ruled that Ecuador had jurisdiction.

The US court exacted a promise from Chevron that it would accept the decision of the Ecuadorian courts.

When the case moved to Ecuador, Donziger conducted a public relations campaign to inform Ecuadoreans about the pollution of the Amazon.

He said that "the indigenous people would never get a fair trial in Ecuador if they did not illuminate what had happened to them and get public support".

In 2011, Chevron filed a RICO (anti-corruption) suit against Donziger in New York City.

The case was heard by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who determined that the ruling of the Ecuadorian court could not be enforced in the US because it was procured by fraud, bribery, and racketeering activities.

As a result of this case, Donziger was disbarred from practicing law in New York in 2018.

Donziger was placed under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan's RICO decision, when he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron's forensics experts.

In July 2021, US District Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty, and Donziger was sentenced to 6 months in jail in October 2021.

While Donziger was under house arrest in 2020, twenty-nine Nobel laureates described the actions taken by Chevron against him as "judicial harassment."

Human rights campaigners called Chevron's actions an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).

In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger's case.

In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release.

Having spent 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest, Donziger was released on April 25, 2022.

In June 2022, a federal appeals court affirmed Donziger's criminal contempt conviction.

In March 2023 the Supreme Court declined to hear further appeals.

Donziger's mother, a social activist, raised him in Jacksonville, Florida, and he attended The Bolles School.

She took him to picket in support of César Chávez's Salad Bowl strike.

Donziger's grandfather was Aaron E. Koota, a Brooklyn district attorney and later Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

Donziger studied history at American University where he also wrote for his college newspaper.