Law of the Jungle
The $19 Billion Battle Over Oil in the Rainforest, and the Lawyer Who'd Stop at Nothing to Win It
Crown, December 2014
In 2011, Steven Donziger, a Manhattan plaintiffs’ lawyer, pulled off the impossible. He won an historic $19 billion verdict against Chevron over oil pollution in the rainforest in Ecuador. After nearly two decades of courtroom war, poor Amazonian Indians and farmers would reap the benefits of the largest environmental judgment ever. Donziger became an activist celebrity, a pal of movie stars, and the subject of an acclaimed documentary that debuted at Sundance. Then Chevron counter-attacked. The company’s scorched-earth investigation revealed that the qualities that propelled Donziger to victory–his hubris and hunger for fame–also gradually blinded him to ordinary ethical constraints. To Donziger, noble ends justified morally murky means that eventually threatened to undermine his great victory: Chevron named him as a defendant in a racketeering suit that could ruin him professionally, and prevent the people of the rainforest from ever receiving the compensation Donziger had won them in court. LAW OF THE JUNGLE tells a very different kind of David-and-Goliath story — one that transforms into a much darker tale of unbridled ambition. A page-turning account of contamination in the Amazon and tarnished ideals, the book reveals the vast gap between law and justice.
“Law of the Jungle” is a riveting piece of storytelling. The environmental insults make you furious and your your heart breaks for the people whose ways of life are violated — but what happens after that challenges your beliefs about fairness and justice.
This absorbing book asks a towering, challenging question that applies to all of the key actors: do the ends justify the means?
We know from events that this story was a moving target. That’s why, as a conservationist and a journalist, I found the the lucid reporting and clarity of writing all the more impressive.
This isn’t a simple David and Goliath story; it’s an engaging passion play that unfolds from the Ecuadorian jungles to the courtrooms of New York.
—David Yarnold, President & CEO, National Audubon Society
This chilling account of the bruising, bare-knuckled conflict between a deeply flawed do-gooder and a well-oiled legal steamrolling machine should give pause to anyone who believes that justice always prevails. Barrett brilliantly shows that in the real world, the law of the jungle—an oxymoron if there ever was one—trumps the rule of law.
—Alan Dershowitz, author of Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law