A Manhattan appeals court has dealt a substantial blow to Steven Donziger’s long-running fight against Chevron Corp, suspending him from practice based on a judge’s finding that he used “fraud” and “coercion” to push an Ecuadorian court to hit the oil giant with an $8.6 billion judgment for pollution in the Amazon rain forest.

But Donziger said Chevron is behind the effort to take him out of practice and the 2014 ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, in which Kaplan admonished Donziger and the plaintiffs’ legal team for alleged “corrupt” conduct that included paying a $500,000 bribe to a judge and ghostwriting an expert witness report, was based on false testimony bankrolled by Chevron.