Patton Boggs is untarred by Chevron’s core assertion that plaintiffs lawyers ghostwrote the report of an avowedly-independent Ecuadorian court-appointed expert, Richard Cabrera. But Chevron’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations complaint broadly tries to rope Patton Boggs, as well as two other U.S. law firms the plaintiffs retained during Chevron’s U.S. discovery campaign, in an alleged cover-up of the alleged Cabrera fraud. “In… lies and misconduct before various U.S. courts, the RICO defendants and their co-conspirators, including law firms Patton Boggs, Emery Celli, and Motley Rice, have brought their pervasive fraud into the courts of this country and have attempted to hide their criminal scheme from Chevron and the courts,” Chevron’s suit asserts.
Most of the alleged cover-up activities seem to be attributed in the complaint not to Patton Boggs, but to the New York boutique Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady. Emery Celli signed the many legal briefs Chevron cites as examples of alleged wire fraud, purportedly filed to “prevent disclosure of [the] fraudulent scheme and falsely promote Cabrera Report as independent and/or neutral.” (Chevron’s characterization of these briefs will, of course, be disputed.) On Feb. 7, Emery Celli withdrew for undisclosed reasons from the New York federal district court discovery action Chevron brought against lead U.S. plaintiffs’ attorney Steven Donziger. Emery Celli did not respond to a request for comment, and plaintiffs’ spoksperson Karen Hinton said that the parties named in the RICO complaint were generally not in a position to comment on the allegations outside of court papers.
