NY court denies Chevron request for immediate release of video in Ecuador oil dispute

NY court blocks video release in Ecuador oil feud

NEW YORK — Chevron will have to wait until next month to find out if it can review raw footage from a documentary about a lengthy legal battle over whether the oil company owes billions of dollars in damages to Ecuadoreans, a New York judge said Tuesday.

A recent lower court ruling ordered the filmmaker to release the outtakes, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay, leaving the company without access to the footage.

On Tuesday, appellate Judge Peter Hall denied Chevron’s request to lift the stay, saying the appeals court would try to expedite an appeal of the ruling by scheduling arguments in early July.

“We’ll dispose of this case as quickly as we can,” Hall told lawyers from both sides at a brief hearing.

The dispute is a continuation of a 17-year-old legal battle. In a lawsuit, the Ecuadoreans claim their land was contaminated during three decades of oil exploration and extraction by Texaco Inc., which became a wholly owned subsidiary of San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron Corp. in 2001.

Chevron has argued that 600 hours of raw footage from the film “Crude” will help bolster claims that lawyers for the plaintiffs have manipulated the judicial system in Ecuador. Filmmaker Joseph Berlinger has countered that the film’s outtakes are protected from disclosure by the First Amendment.

Last month, a district court judge ordered the release of the footage, finding that Berlinger had no confidentiality agreements with anyone interviewed for the film that would raise questions of a journalist’s privilege. The appeals court later granted the temporary stay that kept the judge’s order from going into effect.

Chevron attorney Randy Mastro told the appeals court on Tuesday that the company needed immediate access to the footage to build defense cases both in the civil dispute and in a criminal conspiracy case brought in Ecuador against two lawyers who worked for Texaco.

“We urgently need that evidence now … to prevent a travesty of justice in Ecuador,” Mastro said.

Maura Wogan, an attorney for Berlinger, insisted there was “nothing in the footage” that would help the defense.

Chevron has long argued that a 1998 agreement Texaco signed with Ecuador after a $40 million cleanup absolves it of any liability in the case. It claims Ecuador’s state-run oil company is responsible for much of the pollution in the oil patch that Texaco quit nearly two decades ago.

A court-appointed expert in Ecuador has recommended that Chevron pay up to $27 billion for environmental damages and related illnesses.