High-stakes corporate liability litigation is changing. Rather than just defending themselves in court on the merits, big companies increasingly are taking the offensive against plaintiffs' lawyers who sue them. On Oct 15, for example, Chevron launched a civil racketeering lawsuit in federal court in New York against a New York environmental attorney who won a $19 billion oil pollution judgment against the energy giant two-and-a-half years ago in a local court in Ecuador. The target of Chevron's suit, plaintiffs' attorney Steven Donziger of New York, has fought for 20 years in courts in the US and Ecuador to vindicate the rights of thousands of Amazonian Indians and farmers who blame US oil interests for ruining a large swath of the rain forest east of the Andes. According to the company, Donziger and his team corrupted Ecuadorian judges and court-appointed experts, going so far as ghostwriting an independent official's scientific report and, possibly, the Feb 2011 judgment itself.