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Human Rights/Environmental DamageLittlepage Booth has worked on high profile cases defending individuals whose human and civil rights were violated by powerful corporations. In 2013, Zoe Littlepage and Rainey Booth spent six weeks in trial defending American attorney Steven Donziger against oil giant Chevron in the Southern District of New York.[1] In 2011, Mr. Donziger obtained a historic $18 billion verdict against Chevron on behalf of the Ecuadorean indigenous people for environmental damage and contamination of the rainforest. The pollution is so devastating to the indigenous people, whose livelihood depends on the rainforest, it has been dubbed the Amazonian Chernobyl.[2] Refusing to accept responsibility for this environmental injury, Chevron instead countersued Mr. Donzinger in New York in an attempt to block the Ecuadorean tribes from ever collecting a penny of the verdict.[3] The complex legal issues involved in this one case has spawned thousands of pages of legal opinions from courts all across the country. Zoe Littlepage Cross-Examining Chevron’s Star Witness Former Judge Alberto Guerra Throughout the trial, Ms. Littlepage and Mr. Booth fought hard to introduce evidence of the extensive and devastating pollution caused by Chevron in Ecuador (which the judge had previously ruled out of the case)[4] and took on Chevron’s key witness, Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorean judge in the Lago Agrio case.[5] Ms. Littlepage forced Mr. Guerra to admit he had exaggerated portions of his testimony and that several things he had previously stated were “not true.”[6] The fight in this case continues. Littlepage Booth has also represented individuals and their families seeking justice in the workplace [7] [8] and at the hands of the Houston Police Department.[9]
1.Legal Newsline Legal Journal, Donziger files motion for new representation ahead of bench trial, October 9, 2013.
2.http://chevrontexico.com/about/rainforest-chernobyl/. 3.Businessweek, In Pollution Case, Chevron Seeks $32 Million From Plaintiffs’ Lawyer Donziger, March 20, 2014. 4.Courthouse News Service, Pollution Evidence Seeps Into Chevron Fraud Trial, October 17, 2013. 5.Bloomberg, Ecuador Judge Says He Inflated Bribery Claims to Chevron, October 25, 2013. 6.Texas Employment Law Letter, Houston Company Gets Socked for $300,000 for Derogatory References to Women, January 1994. 7.Houston Chronicle, Dead teen’s family wins separate probe, June 13, 1996; 8.Houston Chronicle, L.A. criminalist to evaluate evidence in alleged suicide, June 18, 1996; Houston Press, Death in the Back 9.Seat, July 3, 1996; El Dia, Destruyen evidencias sobre muerte de joven en una patrulla, June 18, 1996. |