Criminal Contempt Charges

MANHATTAN — The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied Steven Donziger’s motions to disqualify all of the judges in the district from presiding over his case, disqualify the special prosecutors, and dismiss the six criminal contempt charges he’s facing in a dispute arising from his role in obtaining a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador for dumping oil waste in the Amazon rainforest.

Chevron accused Donziger of obtaining the judgment in Ecuador through “fraudulent and corrupt means,” and won a civil suit against him in the Southern District. Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan initially held Donziger in civil contempt for refusing to comply with post-judgment discovery protocol and other violations, then appointed private attorneys as special prosecutors to pursue the criminal contempt charges as Donziger continued to defy the court’s orders.