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Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who'd Stop at Nothing to Win
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About Law Of The Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle
Product Description The gripping story of one American lawyer’s obsessive crusade—waged at any cost—against Big Oil on behalf of the poor farmers and indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest. Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the Ecuadorian peasants and tribes people whose lives were affected by decades of oil production near their villages and fields. During twenty years of legal hostilities in federal courts in Manhattan and remote provincial tribunals in the Ecuadorian jungle, Donziger and Chevron’s lawyers followed fierce no-holds-barred rules. Donziger, a larger-than-life, loud-mouthed showman, proved himself a master orchestrator of the media, Hollywood, and public opinion. He cajoled and coerced Ecuadorian judges on the theory that his noble ends justified any means of persuasion. And in the end, he won an unlikely victory, a $19 billion judgment against Chevon--the biggest environmental damages award in history. But the company refused to surrender or compromise. Instead, Chevron targeted Donziger personally, and its counter-attack revealed damning evidence of his politicking and manipulation of evidence. Suddenly the verdict, and decades of Donziger’s single-minded pursuit of the case, began to unravel. Written with the texture and flair of the best narrative nonfiction, Law of the Jungle is an unputdownable story in which there are countless victims, a vast region of ruined rivers and polluted rainforest, but very few heroes. Review "Exhaustively reported and deftly written…reads like a John Grisham novel." —Forbes “Impressively even-handed. . . [Barrett] calls Texaco to account of dirty drilling, and holds Petroecuador, which maintained such practices for years, to the same standard. He. . . thinks Mr. Donziger made a ‘deal with the Devil’, noting that the attorney even opposed the Ecuadorean government’s own environmental clean-up plan in order to preserve his lawsuit.” —The Economist"A well-crafted account." —Wall Street Journal"Those interested in the rule of law and the role of the courts and lawyers will find Law of the Jungle instructive, entertaining, and frightening." —The American Spectator “A mind-boggling house of mirrors… [Barrett] unravels and imposes order on a confusing, multiyear circus and convincingly sorts out the guilty from the merely depraved." — San Francisco Chronicle" Bloomberg Businessweek writer Paul M. Barrett offers a thorough account of the episode…The story is one of hardball corporate lawyers vs. hardball human rights lawyers, a rough kind of moral equivalency in a battle in which Donziger and his allies were finally tempted into acts that a U.S. judge would in the end rule to be racketeering." —National Review “A richly detailed and well-documented narrative of one of the most important environmental litigations in decades… Worthy of a Hollywood movie—but one that proves the point that truth is stranger than fiction.” -New York Law Journal "Details hardball tactics by both sides...Crisply told." —Dallas Morning News “An enthralling true-life courtroom drama…Almost Shakespearean in scope, featuring a flawed protagonist with good intentions but tragically overreaching ambitions.” —Booklist"An accessible, fast-paced read." —Fortune "Irresistable…a true-life, courtroom version of Heart of Darkness." —Kirkus Reviews“An enthralling, deeply researched volume about the intersection of law and individual rights…Barrett skillfully takes readers inside the players' minds and exposes the underside of high-stakes litigation.” –Library Journal“In a story possessing ‘no shortage of knaves and villains,’ Barrett skillfully weighs the ethics of both Donziger and Chevron and finds them wanting.” —Publishers Weekly “This chilling acc
