CBS: Chevron is America's third largest company behind ExxonMobil and WalMart. One way it became that big was by buying Texaco in 2001. Now, that purchase of Texaco has pulled Chevron into a titanic struggle in the Amazon.
The people who live in a remote region of Ecuador are suing Chevron, saying reckless oil exploration poisoned the most important rain forest on earth.
Soon, a judge in a tiny Ecuadorian courtroom will decide whether the oil company must pay as much as $27 billion in damages. That would make it the largest environmental lawsuit in history. Most everything is in dispute in this bitter struggle except one thing: powering American cars with Amazon crude has left a toxic legacy.
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The Secoyas took 60 Minutes to their community hut, where we saw the driving force behind the suit, Stephen Donziger, a New York lawyer, far from home.
"These are people who never believed they had a right to sue an American company in their own court system," Donziger told Pelley.
"Yeah, but you know what Chevron says. They say that this is being driven by a New York plaintiff’s lawyer, and they don't mean that as a compliment," Pelley pointed out.
"I'm well aware of that. They've taken out advertisements in the Ecuadorian press with my name trying to attack my reputation," Donziger said.
Asked what he thinks of that, Donziger told Pelley, "Well, I think that it puts me, in the membership frankly, of a very distinguished club of people."
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