court i'm stephen danziger this case raises serious constitutional and human rights issues the latter related to the ability of thousands of actual citizens who i've represented now for over twenty five years to enforce a judgment against chevron that has been affirmed by three appellate courts in ecuador in him for a firm for enforcement purposes by the supreme court of canada the specific today is whether i as the person who was raised ninety nine percent of the funds to support this litigation over all of these years i helping my clients sell some of their interest in the judgment thereby providing a lifeline to communities literally on the brink of extinction because of oil pollution whether i can be held in contempt based on my reasonable reliance of judge kap rico injunction issued in two thousand and fourteen and explained by him in a clarification order in april of that year that allowed me specifically authorized me to raise funds and get paid a retainer to help the communities in ecuador pursue their claims and try to enforce their judgment as is their right by the way under decisions of this very court and the supreme courts of ecuador in canada judge kaplan wrote when explaining his injunction in two thousand and fourteen these works he said as long as no collections are made in respect to the law go our rio judgment that is the ecuador judge and funnel to dom's or as retainer pa the new york judgment that is his rico judgment would not prevent danziger from being paid just as he has been paid over the last nine or ten years when i expressed concern that his march th injunction that is the injunction he issue without the later explanation would prevent me and my clients from continuing the litigation even though he had ruled we were allowed to do so outside the united states he called  concerns far fetched fanciful and bordering on the irresponsible so based on that assurance from judge kaplan i proceeded over the next four years to raise funds from investors  geisha financier's in order to pursue or help my clients pursue fauresmith in other jurisdictions primarily canada where we had counseling canada and i did exactly what he said i could do in response to that judge kaplan five years later issued a nd injunction which completely and i would say radically enlarged what he had rule into that what he had issued in two thousand and fourteen upon which this court relied in affirming his rico judge her and in that injunction he prevented me without mentioning his clarification order his explanation from april from raising any money and being paid any money from rd party investors that we have been doing for several years in an effort to deliver some sort of justice to these injunction they asked judge kaplan to launch deimos burdensome and intrusive discovery process affecting me my wife my family investors etc that would  truly on attorney client privilege and all sorts of significant constitutional concerns related to privilege and privacy and i assured her i'm sorry was her question now i filed a motion for a declaratory judgment before that process started asking judge kaplan to rule as a matter of law that chevron had no right to that discovery process that would pretty much wipe out all of my privileges and put my bill lives of my clients in danger for various reasons judge kaplan refused to rule instead he authorized government to engage in unfettered discovery that lasted months and months and in the end of the day i was trying to get to this court for almost two years now because i wanted to argue and i will argue right now and have argued in my papers that what judge kaplan was really doing was what this court with great interest as you were talking about what judge kaplan assured you in the stay in the process of litigation of the stay argument and so up to there i thought the argument was that what us held in contempt for doing did not violate the or at least you had a reasonable belief it didn't violate the injunction because judge kaplan himself told you that right it is the evidence of your engaging in selling parts of the plaintiff's interests in the judgment in order to raise litigation funds is that evidence about something that you did after the nd injunction or is it about what you did before that injunction was issued it was about what i did before that injunction was issued ok so the so i am correct that your principal argument here is that as of the time that you engaged in those activities you were engaged in something you reasonably believed were legitimate activities because kaplan issued finding helping me in contempt prohibiting me from doing the very apps you know authorized me to do back in two thousand and fourteen upon which this court case and i think i understand what you're what you're saying here  and with respect i did say it's slightly confusing because if there were a nd order and then you violated that then we'd have a whole different kind of situation here what you're really saying is the contempt finding was based on an interpretation that you maintain is contrary to the interpretation you were given at an earlier point in the litigation that's what you mean by that's precisely correct ok you know i could just add this one point real quickly because i know running out of time but you know i was in court judge dictate courts around the world well let's let's say we have different legal issues the legal issue in iran who had to do with the effect of a particular new york statute the legal issue here has to do with the effect of a specific injunction and what that injunction meant and how you could interpret it these are different things that's correct i don't mean to get too far afield but i only say that because the fact of judge kaplan going back in my view on his word the words particularly have since you've been held in contempt and it seems to me that the strongest argument you have and the one that is most relevant to a finding of contempt is that the order either was not clear enough from the beginning or was represented to you by the very person who issued it in a way that meant that you had a reasonable belief that you could go forward and that doesn't we agree with you on that we don't necessarily need at least for purposes definition of the issue here and that is the main issue i abided by his words i heard his words i acted in accordance with his words what i thought was my reasonable belief and acting in accordance with his words and i don't think it's you know i think it's unlawful for him later to find the in contempt based on a different definition and then apply retroactively i have not violated there's no allegation i laid his his later enlargement of the two thousand and fourteen order conduct so that conduct is not before the court that they did before and also by mr brown sugar in contempt and other grounds including his violations of the forensic inspection protocol and the c p l r fifteen to twenty  argument is that it was perfectly fine for him to benefit from fines traceable to the fraudulent judgment and use guns funds to pay for his personal expenses gym memberships wine bar and the like because he said the rico injunction did not clearly that argument is clearly meritless as the district court found the injunction is clear and unambiguous paragraph one imposes a construct of trust unquote the text of the injunction i would be inclined to agree with you that it's at at least a very reasonable interpretation of the injunction and maybe the only reasonable one these that  funds that are raised by selling a portion of the injunction is traceable of the judgment or traceable to the judgment but it were not left just there we're left  situation was which mr dunne sigur sought a stay of the order essentially by saying this keeps me from doing what i've been doing for years to try to finance the ongoing with a geisha and he made that point to the judge with respect to a the judge says nothing in the new york judgment that's the rico injunction prevents tons a year from continuing to work on the case period then a little below on page thirteen thus at least as long as no collections are made in response to the lago judgment and funneled to don's ago or as retainer payments the new york judgment would not prevent him from being paid just as he has been paid at least almost a one million dollars  past nine or ten years the new york judgment would change things in respect of the payment of any contingency to don's or as any such payment would be traceable to the judgment and thus subject to paragraph one  it's a little hard for me to understand that language as saying anything other than as giving an interpretation the judge's own interpretation of what traceable means and maybe that's not what i would have thought looking at the word traceable in the st instance but that sounds like what he's doing is saying if you sell part of your contingent fee that's traceable but and so long as no money is made by actual enforcement of the judgment and so on hold to you under the pretense that it's part of a retainer agreement that would be just like a contingency and that's no good but otherwise you know go in peace zone what am i missing about that suggestion whatsoever that he changed the substance of scope of the injunction the issue here has to do with whether the rules under which he was operating were made clear to mr dunn and so the question is why couldn't he rely on this as the judge's interpretation of the original language maybe it's a bad interpretation maybe it's a wrong interpretation maybe if that's what the judge meant in the st place but he said something different you no longer has the authority to change what the languages but that's got nothing has anything to do with what's in mr dunn's agrees mind well your honor there's no mens rea or requirement for a civil contempt charge but the point is simply the operative order here is the into language but wait wait wait wait wait wait wait but the what he says to the judge what he says to the judge is this is it is a terrible injunction you should stay and i'm going get it reversed it should be stayed which is something the judge has the authority to do you should do that because it has these consequences and the judge says to him no it does not and now the question is he's supposed to profit from the injunction i mean it's all right from the fraudulent judgment by obtaining proceeds of the sale of shares in that judgment and pocketing the judge never said that to the contrary he said precisely the opposite again and again and again in this day order a students in the judgment and spend them on his personal expenses you can't possibly reach that conclusion consistently statements in the in the judge's order i'm not even talking about the injunction where he says for instance the new york judgment including paragraph  in fact would deprive don's leader of the ability to profit from the lago audio judgment that's if tainted by fraud and it would prevent him from benefiting personally from property traceable to that fraudulent judgment at sixteen and seventeen there's no way to read those what about a page eighteen where the judge says nothing in the new york judgment prevents the l a p d and their allies from continuing to raise money in the same session that's a perfect example you because as you know the parents that acoa but you didn't read it says nothing in the new york jets prevents the last other than the two lab representatives were named in the new york judgement and their allies from going to raise money so the point the judge is making there is the same one i just to representatives like mr dunn's or are bound by the injunction the other lap last night on appearing laps or not bound by the judgment at the time it was entered so they were free to continue to raise money raising money in ways that the canada and other jurisdictions where he unsuccessfully tried to enforce the judgment and at the time this injunction was entered the not apparent lapse could have sold interest in the judgment and use that money to fund other lawyers to negate their case and that's the point that judge couple of your honors just a couple of quick points i mean one is as you know i dispute that the judge was fraudulent i recognize judge found that it was i have abided we have abided by his orders other courts have decided otherwise this court has decided to affirm that very findings so we're in it whatever happens in canada or elsewhere i mean at at worst we are bound by that decision whether or not any knowledge and i absolutely acknowledge that getting to mr cup with mr hungers points you know i wasn't raising money for myself i was prohibited from raising money from based on my interest as well as the two other ecuadorian individuals who appear wh clear that i could do was help my client sell their shares so they could raise litigation moneys to enforce their judgment outside of the united states which is exactly what they were doing mr hungers right i have not appeared however if it but you have to do you have to establish one thing more right which is that the injunction in your reasonable interpretation based on what judge kaplan said entitle you to make money from that and it's not just that yes not just that you could raise money help them raise money canada you know this is a case in multiple countries with a broad institutional history and i would argue that i'm vital in my client certainly believes so to sort of helping things keep running even though i do not appear in court and you know the money i that my clients paid me on the retainer as authorized by judge kaplan since the two thousand and fourteen rico judgment are not huge sums of money a lot of that money went right back out to pay case expenses because many times we were out of money you know so this is been a tough tough road for my clients who are suffering in ecuador and while i know that's not the precise issue before the court today i would urge you to keep it in mind because if chevron has its way in a judge  know interpretation today of what he didn't two thousand and fourteen prevails i truly believe i will and other warriors as well will be unable to continue valid legal efforts as as validated by this very court and its affirmative judge kaplan to try to enforce the judgment outside of the united states where by the way progress has been made in other countries including in canada where we want to unanimous supreme court decision in two thousand and fifteen the precise distinction just to respond to one final point mr hunger is between whether moneys or the profit so to speak are coming out of a collection of the judgment versus a sale of an interest permitted by judge kaplan of the labs to fund enforcement of the judgment that's the precise distinction he made and i think mr hunger and chevron in his reeves are trying to conflate all that and ignore the explanation judge kaplan judge lynch as you point out on in that in its april th you know state clarification order as a matter of fact when chevron came in trying to hold me in contempt in their st papers they didn't even mention that just i would ask the court to be kate kept judge companies finding of me being held in contempt on that basis one final point he held me in contempt on a number of things post his contempt you know post his refusal to rule in my on  my motions and a lot of that came out of a discovery process that never would have happened in my view had judge kaplan that here to his original two thousand and fourteen rigo injunction so i'm asking the court to put me back in a position consistent with the two thousand and fourteen injunction erase all the contempt and all that frankly ruinous financial use that come from that and basically put me back in the status quo ante where i can continue to engage in these