PDF《September 9, 2014》

September 9,

2014 Mr.

Paul M. Barrett Mr. Stuart Krichevsky Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, Inc.

381 Park Avenue South, Suite

428 New York, NY

10016 Mr. Roger Scholl Vice President and Executive Editor The Crown Publishing Group Ms. Katherine Trager Senior Vice President and General Counsel Penguin Random House

1745 Broadway New York, NY

10019 Re: Notice of defamation regarding Law of the Jungle Dear Sirs and Madam, I write to put you on notice that a book written by Paul M. Barrett and slated to be released in September by Crown Publishers, Law of the Jungle ( the book ), contains improperly sourced and possibly plagiarized material, is replete with factual inaccuracies, describes events that did not occur, and in other ways promotes information known by Barrett to be false and defamatory. The book also defames me by adopting virtually wholesale key elements of Chevron'

s false narrative about the environmental lawsuit in Ecuador, thereby leaving the false impression that I am dishonest and that I engaged in criminal acts to procure a legitimate judgment that has been upheld by three layers of courts in Ecuador, including in a unanimous opinion by Ecuador'

s Supreme Court.1

1 The thrust of Chevron'

s false narrative also has been rejected by multiple U.S. federal trial and federal appellate courts in decisions that Barrett ignores in his book. These include decisions from no fewer than six separate federal appellate courts and eight separate federal trial courts. Some of the decisions include Chevron Corp v. Allen, No. 2:10-mc-00091 (D. Vt. Dec. 2, 2010) (finding no evidence of fraud, false pretenses or undue influence regarding Chevron'

s claims);

Chevron Corp. v. Bonifaz, No. 10-mc-30022 (D. Mass. Dec 22, 2010) (denying Chevron'

s request to apply crime-fraud exception in discovery dispute);

Chevron Corp. Shefftz, No. 10-mc-10352-JLT (D. Mass., Dec. 7, 2010) (finding Chevron has not shown Respondent engaged in or intended any criminal or fraudulent activity );

and Chevron Corp. v. Quarles, No. 3:10-cv-00686 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 21, 2010) (finding that Chevron'

s allegations quickly spiraling out of control and rejecting fraud claims). Mr. Paul Barrett et al. September 9,

2014 Page

2 of

12 I reserve all rights against Mr. Barrett, Crown Publishers, Stuart Krichevsky, and others who may be involved in the active promotion of the defamatory assertions in the book. With this communication, you are hereby given notice to preserve all documents and information (including electronically-stored information) in your possession or under your control related to the book, including all of communications and contracts between Barrett, Krichevsky, and Crown, and all documents and information concerning the book'

s research, authorship, sale, marketing, and promotion, all of which will potentially be the subject of future litigation. The information that must be preserved includes any of Barrett'

s notes concerning interviews with his sources, particularly where he purports to quote anonymous sources, some of which I have a basis to believe are invented by him. If you have any automatic records deletion processes, you must immediately ensure that they do not impact the integrity of all of your stored records and communications regarding the book. I also believe I can document in a litigation how Barrett has misappropriated his role as a reporter for Businessweek to repeatedly promote and broadcast the defamation against me contained in his book, using the magazine and its website as a platform for that purpose. Some of the bases for my potential claim are as follows. Inadequate Fact Checking Given the inaccuracies and false assertions documented herein, it appears that there was wholly inadequate fact-checking of the Law of the Jungle.2 Though I am the main focus of the book and I have an intimate familiarity with most of the significant events in question, nobody from Crown (much less Barrett) contacted me to verify the facts asserted. Likewise, as far as I can ascertain, no other person on the legal team for the affected Ecuadorian communities has been contacted by either Barrett or Crown for fact-checking purposes. Nor did either Crown or Barrett provide me with an advance copy of the book. In fact, I have reason to believe that Barrett (with the cooperation of Crown) took affirmative steps to block galley copies from falling into the hands of either myself or any member of our team. The failure to adequately fact check is causing me actual harm because copies of the book are currently circulating to reviewers and other persons of influence. It is clear that many of the inaccuracies easily could have been avoided had timely and proper fact-checking taken place. Barrett'