In re Application of Chevron Corporation

Ecuadorean citizens sued Chevron Corporation (Chevron) (plaintiff) in Ecuadorean court over damage allegedly caused by Chevron’s pollution of Ecuadorean territory (the Lago Agrio case). The Ecuadorean court issued an $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron in the Lago Agrio case. While the Ecuadorean proceedings were ongoing, Chevron initiated arbitration against the Ecuadorean government (Ecuador) (defendant) under the rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), claiming that Ecuador had breached its obligations under the bilateral investment treaty between Ecuador and the United States by unfairly supporting the Ecuadorean claimants in the litigation and by failing to respect Ecuador’s obligations under a settlement agreement with Chevron’s predecessor. Chevron sought discovery of the raw footage of a documentary film, Crude, the outtakes of which purported to show improprieties by the supposedly neutral experts named by the Ecuadorean court in the Lago Agrio case and interference with the Ecuadorean judiciary by Ecuador’s attorneys and government representatives. To obtain the raw footage of these outtakes from the film’s producer, Joseph Berlinger, a resident of New York, Chevron filed proceedings in United States district court under 28 U.S.C. § 1782. Ecuador argued that 28 U.S.C. § 1782 did not apply to arbitrations, and even if it did, all of the discretionary factors weighed against compelling discovery of the raw footage.