Hemispheric Institute on the Americas

Suzana Sawyer is a Professor of Anthropology at UC, Davis. Her new book, The Small Matter of Suing Chevron, takes on a legal trilogy. In 2011, an Ecuadorian court issued the world’s largest environmental contamination liability: a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron. Within years, a US federal court and an international tribunal determined that the Ecuadorian judgment had been procured through fraud and was unenforceable. The Small Matter delves into how these distinct legal truths were composed through chemical, scientific, and legal technique—precipitating a metamorphic transformation that transmuted a contamination claim into an environmental liability, then a racketeering scheme, and ultimately a breach of treaty.