Over the past six weeks inside a Manhattan courtroom, Chevron has dumped a mountain of damning evidence before US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in an effort to undermine a multibillion-dollar pollution verdict the company incurred in Ecuador in 2011. Chevron wants Kaplan to rule that New York-based plaintiffs' attorney Steven Donziger lied, fabricated evidence, and even blackmailed an Ecuadorian judge as part of an elaborate shakedown. On top of all that, the oil company has produced troubling indications that Donziger's legal team ghostwrote the contamination judgment. And still, Chevron could eventually lose this case. After closing arguments Tuesday, there's not much doubt how Kaplan will rule. Presiding over the civil trial without a jury, Kaplan has sent every signal a judge can send that he's on his way to finding Donziger liable for several varieties of fraud. Despite the questionable way he pursued the two-decade-old litigation over US oil industry pollution in the rain forest in Ecuador, Donziger has some entirely respectable arguments on appeal.