When a judge writes that an "extraordinary" case "include [s] things that normally come only out of Hollywood", you can be sure that a book will soon follow. In March Lewis Kaplan, a judge in New York, ruled that a $19 billion award for damages levied by an Ecuadorean court against Chevron, an oil company, was based on fraud. Sure enough, two new works have just come out to clarify a case of unparalleled notoriety and cost. "Law of the Jungle", by Paul Barrett, a business journalist, offers a good starting point. His tale goes back to the Wild West atmosphere of Ecuador in 1970, when the military government invited Texaco, an American energy firm, to drill in the Amazon region. The gringos dumped oil-exposed water into streams and pockmarked the land with petroleum-laden pits. For years the government looked the other way while pocketing over 90% of the revenues. However, once it asked Texaco to seal the pits, the firm refused to spend the piddling $4m a clean-up would have cost.
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