First, as we reported last week, Keker & Van Nest lawyers for Steven Donziger — the lead U.S. lawyer for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and a defendant in the Chevron racketeering suit before Judge Kaplan — filed a motion to transfer the RICO case out of Kaplan’s courtroom, arguing that Chevron improperly manipulated the assignment system to get the case before a presumably sympathetic judge.
Then on Friday, lawyers for two of the Ecuadorian plaintiffs who are also RICO defendants filed a brief asserting that Chevron should be denied the injunction because of its own dirty hands. The March 4 filing asserts that Chevron has arranged to keep two alleged former operatives from disclosing the oil company’s purported evidence tampering by “acting as a benefactor” to the operatives via cash stipends and other assistance.
