Court grants Chevron access to 9 years of email data of activists, critics [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Court grants Chevron access to 9 years of email data of activists, critics [pdf]

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119 pointsbonchibuji26 comments

Welcome to the world of complex litigation, where cases take decades, span continents, and make lawyers eight figures.

http://www.plainsite.org/tags/index.html?id=701&complex=1

This particular case docket can be found here:

http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=2322215

Stanford Law had a one-day conference devoted to this case, and I heard top lawyers from both sides speak. I emerged disgusted by just about everyone. There are no winners in this matter--except the lawyers.

If there is enough proof to grant them access to these records, why isn't a prosecutor taking over the case ? Giving access to confidential data to the adversarial party doesn't seem very wise.

I'm not a law expert, but in this case Chevron is the prosecuter. It's a civil case.

Prosecutors work for the government in criminal cases.

Most of these are civil cases; Chevron is the plaintiff in some and the defendant in others.

The bar for discovery in a civil litigation is far lower than the bar for initiating a prosecution. And that's how it should be. If you are convinced that Enron dumped toxic waste in your town on purpose, should you have to prove your case to a point sufficient to initiate a prosecution before you're allowed access to their e-mails? That wouldn't make any sense--the point of discovery is to get all the potentially relevant facts on the table so they can be sorted through.

Also, setting the bar that high for discovery wouldn't make any sense. To initiate an arrest and criminal prosecution, you essentially have to have a "more likely than not he did it" belief in the suspect's guilt. But the "more likely than not" standard is all it takes to win a civil case. So by the time you get enough evidence to initiate a criminal case, you have enough to win a civil case.

Isn't there cases where the court would appointing a neutral party to do the search ? I understand that the plaintiff wants to get access to all these information but it seems unwise to allow them since they already are in a conflictual situation. It gives them power to discover other things unrelated to the case.

Chevron isn't getting direct access to a big e-mail database. Plaintiffs' lawyers will do the search and produce to Chevron only what's relevant, not privileged, not confidential, etc.

Chevron doesn't have council in house?

To be clear, I mean the counsel representing the activists will do the search and give only relevant documents to Chevron. Since the activists are adverse to Chevron, it wouldn't be appropriate for Chevron's counsel to go through the emails themselves.

This is the normal procedure in civil litigation.

Happens all the time when you sue corporations. That's why they're legally obligated to retain email.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090238

What Chevron/Texaco did to Ecuador makes the BP accident look like a pan of bacon.

Do you have a source?

Just a little googling brought this: http://chevrontoxico.com/

(Offtopic) Is this a common idiom? I've never heard pan of bacon as the end of this kind of phrase before.

I think he's talking about the grease left over after cooking it.

If you're from the south it doesn't have the same meaning.

The title is both linkbait and inaccurate.

Yeah really. Chevron is getting names and IP's for accused fraudsters/racketeers. Doesn't exact stir the same level of outrage as "the data of activists".

Wrong. Making a claim in a courtroom and telling truth has not got one thing to do with each other.

Chevron has the unmitigated gall here to claim the $18.2 Billion settlement against Chevron in Uruguay was the product of FRAUD. Chevron is claiming they did nothing wrong in Uruguay and they should be allowed to look look through 9 years of e-mail of activists to get the chance to try to dig up something up

Could someone summarize the highlights or link to an actual article? I don't really have either the time or the training to glean the subtleties from 12 pages of legalese.

It may be 12 pages but it's really straightforward. Just read it myself.

Interesting, I wonder if this will lead to boycotts of Chevron? It does appear to be a pretty large human rights violation.

You generally can't boycott a particular producer of a commodity like oil.

There are plenty of Chevron branded gas stations.

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