Charges of Intimidation as Corporate Executives “Freak Out” at Houston Marathon
SAN FRANCISCO--(January 26, 2010)--Chevron is facing charges that its aggressive defense of a $27 billion environmental liability in Ecuador is crossing the line into violating the free speech rights of its critics in the U.S., according to news reports and publicly available court filings.
Legal papers filed earlier this month in federal court in San Francisco accuse Chevron of trying to create a “chilling effect” by using lawsuits to silence critics of its misconduct in violation of free speech rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Chevron is accused of orchestrating the ejection by the City of Houston of runners from the Houston Marathon Expo Center – where the oil giant was the main sponsor – because the runners wanted to call attention to human rights problems in Ecuador that are the subject of the lawsuit.
“The tactics Chevron is now using have gone beyond what is reasonable in a litigation context and are clearly meant to intimidate its opponents into silence, implicating Constitutional rights in the process,” said Laura Garr, an American advisor to the Amazonian communities.
In Houston, Chevron attracted unwanted headlines earlier this month when members of a team of runners from the Rainforest Action Network participating in the Chevron Houston Marathon were forcibly removed from the marathon’s Expo. The runners had paid for a table to distribute “I’m Running for Human Rights” stickers and information about Chevron’s refusal to clean up the environmental disaster in Ecuador, where a lawsuit accuses the company of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest to cut costs.
Steven Karpas, director of the marathon, told the runners from RAN that “higher ups at Chevron are freaking out” and threatened to arrest them if they didn’t leave. Police then ejected the runners from the city-owned and operated building for exercising their right to free speech, giving rise to First Amendment claims against both the city of Houston and Chevron, according to RAN.
The ejection received wide coverage in the Houston media.
“It is a sad day when the Chevron Houston Marathon - which raises awareness and money for many important causes - would deny the legal rights of participants to appease a corporate sponsor that is clearly ashamed of its human rights record,” said Maria Ramos, one of the RAN runners.
In San Francisco, the separate, legal case accuses Chevron of violating a California law that prevents corporations from threatening lawsuits to silence its critics. The case was brought by a lawyer, Cristobal Bonifaz, who has been a longtime critic of Chevron’s malfeasance in Ecuador and who was once involved in the underlying environmental litigation in that country.
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