“Steven Donziger has shamed our profession,” Randy Mastro said twice on Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan, capping six weeks of trial in Chevron Corp.’s fraud case against Donziger and his Ecuadorian clients. In closing arguments before Southern District Judge Lewis Kaplan (See Profile), Mastro reiterated claims that Donziger engineered a shakedown in the Ecuadorian courts and manufactured a 2011 environmental judgment against Chevron now valued at $9.5 billion.
“We have seen exposed at this trial the worst of the American bar,” said Mastro, Chevron’s lead trial counsel from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. “In the guise of practicing law,” Mastro said, Donziger engaged in bribery, forgery, and extortion. “Lawyers don’t do these things. Criminals do.”
