U.S. actress Daryl Hannah shows her hand covered with oil in Ecuador’s oil region in the Amazon, Monday, June 4, 2007. (AP Photo)

In a 500-page ruling on Tuesday, New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan sided with oil giant Chevron and its argument that an Ecuadorian court’s ruling that Chevron needed to pay $9.5 billion for polluting the Amazon jungle was based on "FRAUDULENT INFORMATION."

Chevron’s complaint was that Steven Donziger, a New York-based lawyer who has represented Ecuadorian plaintiffs since the 1990s, among others, knowingly interfered with the Ecuadorian court’s decision process by bribing witnesses to speak ill of Chevron and ghost-writing the court’s final judgment against Chevron.

A Harvard Law School alum, Donziger denies any wrongdoing in the Chevron case and points to his flawless record as proof that he has not ever engaged in fraud or committed any other ethical violation since he began practicing law in 1991.

Though Kaplan acknowledged that Chevron “might bear some responsibility” for the pollution in the South American nation, the judge wrote, “Justice is not served by inflicting injustice. The ends do not justify the means.”

The only person who has testified on behalf of Chevron that there was any evidence of “fraud” is former Ecuadorian Judge Alberto Guerra, an admitted con man who lied more than 20 times on . Guerra was paid about $350,000 by Chevron for his testimony.

Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit group working to protect the Amazon rainforest and to advance the rights of indigenous peoples living in the Amazon Basin, said the group wasn’t surprised by the court’s ruling, since Judge Kaplan encouraged Chevron to file the case in the first place.

Paz y Miño further said it is troubling that Chevron has used this case to fool its shareholders and the mainstream media into believing this ruling exonerates them from any responsibility for the time its sub-company Texaco dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into rivers and streams, spilling millions of gallons of , and abandoning hazardous waste in hundreds of unlined open-air pits littered throughout the Amazon region in 1964.

He said the ruling is the equivalent of a Spanish court ruling that a trial in the U.S. is fraudulent and therefore the U.S. can no longer proceed with justice or rule a certain way, solely because the Spanish court said so.

As Paz y Miño pointed out, this kind of ruling violates principles of international comity, which require courts to respect the decisions made by courts in other countries.

“Today’s verdict is an example of CHEVRON BUYING AND BULLYING ITS WAY TO A VERDICT with 60 law firms and thousands of legal professionals hell-bent on exhausting the Ecuadorians and their allies,” Amazon Watch said in a statement.

“Such a verdict will ultimately prove useless in Chevron’s efforts to evade justice.

“Chevron fought for years to have the case moved from a US court to Ecuador and Judge Kaplan – who first recommended that Chevron file the case – holds no authority over Ecuadorian courts. Nor can he issue a ruling preventing the Ecuadorian plaintiffs from collecting on an enforceable verdict outside of the U.S. Furthermore, Kaplan’s current order is effectively indistinguishable from an injunction issued by Kaplan in the case two years ago, which was struck down on appeal,” the group said.

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