Trial Monitoring, A Tool for Legal Recourse

By Zoë Bourne

October 2021

In 2011 an Ecuadorian Court awarded 30,000 indigenous plaintiffs $9.5 billion against Chevron Oil Company for decades of massive oil contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Chevron’s response was to move its assets out of Ecuador and attack Steven Donziger, the lead Plaintiffs’ attorney, claiming that he had obtained the judgment through fraud. The case against Steven Donziger has sparked global outrage among attorneys, legal organizations, Nobel Prize winners, NGOs and members of the U.S. Congress, among others. This article discusses the Donziger case in the context of trial monitoring: a method to provide transparency and facilitate due process for those at risk of receiving an unfair trial