Monday was not the first time that Chevron Corp. went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to evade a $9.5 billion Ecuadorean judgment over its legacy oil operations in the Amazon. And it wasn’t the first time that, from Chevron’s perspective, the show veered horribly off script.
When Chevron appeared before the Second Circuit back in September 2011, the panel grilled Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Randy Mastro on why a U.S. court can pre-emptively halt worldwide enforcement of a foreign judgment. It reversed U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s preliminary injunction just three days later. For Monday’s argument, Chevron responded by taking trial lawyer Mastro off appellate duty, and subbing in his partner, Theodore Olson, who has argued 61 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and won about three-quarters of them.
