The WSJ has an article on Chevron's legal woes in the wake of the environmental damage they have caused in Ecuador - Pension Funds Fret as Chevron Faces Ecuador Ruling.

Big public pension funds are raising concerns about an impending court judgment that could hold Chevron Corp. liable for billions of dollars in alleged environmental damages in the Ecuadorian jungle.

The funds, which together hold $1 billion in Chevron shares, are worried that the oil giant could face as much as $27 billion in damages in the 15-year-old class-action case, which was filed by a U.S. law firm on behalf of thousands of indigenous Ecuadorians.

The lawsuit, being tried in the Amazonian town of Lago Agrio, alleges that Texaco polluted waterways and wells across a vast area of Ecuador by dumping billions of gallons of oil waste into leaky pits during 20 years of operations there. Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001 for about $30 billion.

The potential damages in the case, which were tallied by a court-appointed expert, could dwarf the $3.5 billion Exxon Corp. had to pay for cleanup, fines and damages after the 1989 Valdez oil spill.

Chevron has said the lawsuit is baseless, and has attacked the assessment of its potential damages as flawed.

The long legal fight has spilled over into Washington. Chevron is pushing the U.S. Trade Representative's office to strip Ecuador of a range of trade preferences. It says the Ecuadorian government and state-owned oil company PetroEcuador haven't lived up to agreements indemnifying Chevron against future liabilities in the case. The USTR hasn't acted on Chevron's requests, the most recent of which came in a letter last month.

Eric Bloom, a lawyer who represents Ecuador in Washington, dismisses the Chevron petitions as "an attempt to use political muscle to shut down a legal case."

Others have urged the trade agency to stay out of the matter, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, who wrote a letter to the Bush administration in 2006 saying the Ecuadorian plaintiffs "deserve their day in court."

Grist has a look at the activists who won this year's Goldman Environmental Prize, for taking on Chevron over oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest (Vanity Fair had a good article outlining the background to this case a while back).

Think changing the world is impossible? Think again. From a polio-stricken musician who's spreading the word about clean water in his native Mozambique to a pair of Ecuadorian activists taking on Big Oil, this year's seven Goldman Prize winners prove that a little heart and a lot of sweat can make a big difference.

I attended the Goldman Prize presentation last night, and it was, per usual, a spectacular celebration of uncommonly dedicated individuals working to make this world a better place. The stories of their struggles and triumphs wetted every eye in the house, and they serve as a beacon of inspiration to all who care about the future of planet Earth.

Unless you are Chevron.

This morning, Chevron ran a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle attacking one of the recipients, Pablo Fajarado. "Mr. Fajarado is a front man for a group of Ecuadorian and American trail lawyers pursuing a claim against Chevron."

No! Not trial lawyers! Chevron would prefer that anyone bringing suit against them be represented by fishmongers, not trial lawyers. Or something.

I've met those trial lawyers -- and they are, as you might expect, incredibly overworked and underpaid individuals doing this work not for love of lucre but desire for justice. And, if I may project some of my own feelings at this very moment, righteous anger against asshole oil companies.

The rest of the ad is unforgivable character assassination and innuendo.

Some things the Chevron ad neglected to mention: shortly after beginning his work, Mr. Fajarado's brother was brutally murdered, and the case has never been resolved. Luis Yanza, a co-worker and co-recipient of the Goldman Prize, has a young daughter, and an attempt was made to kidnap her when she was 9 years old. Fajarado's and Lanza's office have been burglarized, and both the U.N. and the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights have intervened to try to stop a systematic pattern of intimidation against the plaintiffs and their legal team.

Four Americans working on the documentary Sweet Crude, about the impact of the petroleum industry on the economy and environment of the Niger Delta, were arrested in Nigeria this weekend and are still being detained. A Nigerian man accompanying them was also seized. Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter and the fourth-largest exporter to the United States, and its petroleum industry is infamous for pollution, injustice, and corruption.