Law of the Jungle is the gripping story of one American
lawyer’s obsessive crusade—waged at any cost—against big oil businesses on behalf of the
poor farmers and indigenous tribes of the Amazon rain forest.
Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard
educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against
multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the
third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the
Ecuadorian peasants and tribespeople whose lives were affected by decades of
oil production near their villages and fields. During twenty years of
legal hostilities in federal courts in Manhattan and remote provincial
tribunals in the Ecuadorian jungle, Donziger and Chevron’s lawyers followed
fierce no-holds-barred rules. Donziger, a larger than life, loud-mouthed
showman, proved himself a master orchestrator of the media, Hollywood, and
public opinion. He cajoled and coerced Ecuadorian judges on the theory that his
noble ends justified any means of persuasion. And in the end, he won an
unlikely victory, a nineteen billion dollar judgment against Chevron—the biggest
environmental damages award in history. But the company refused to
surrender or compromise. Instead, Chevron targeted Donziger personally, and its
counter attack revealed damning evidence of his politicking and manipulation of
evidence. Suddenly the verdict, and decades of Donziger’s single-minded pursuit
of the case, began to unravel.
Written with the texture and flair of the best narrative
nonfiction, Law of the Jungle is a fascinating story in which there are
countless victims, a vast region of ruined rivers and polluted rain forest, but
very few heroes.
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