The travails of Edward Snowden aren’t the only thing making news for Ecuador these days.

I highly recommend a Washington Post story published earlier this week, “Why Chevron is suing one of D.C.’s most powerful lobbying firms over…the Amazon jungle?”

It begins with a great lead: “It’s a monumental battle of wills, money and egos.”

It’s the story of a vast, complex series of lawsuits that began with allegations of vast environmental damage in Ecuador caused prior to 1992 by Texaco, almost ten years before the company was taken over by Chevron.

If you like legal thrillers, this seems to have all the appropriate bits and pieces.

Lots to learn here. I learned, for example, that there are hedge funds that invest in complicated lawsuits, providing the up front cash for legal costs and taking a cut of any eventual judgements. We’re talking investing in litigation. No wonder the courts are clogged up!

The hedge fund involved in this case is

Burford Capitol LLC

.

You can Google “Burford” and “Chevron” and related terms to come up with many interesting documents from this case posted online.

The company website describes their product, litigation finance.

At its most basic level, litigation finance is very straightforward. A third-party (such as Burford Capital) funds the legal fees and expenses associated with a litigation or arbitration, in return for a portion of the ultimate proceeds (settlement or judgment), if any. Importantly, the funding is typically “non-recourse”, meaning that if there is no recovery for the plaintiff, the litigation financier receives no fee.

Of course, claimants have always found ways to fund their cases – with available capital, through a bank loan, or by agreeing to a contingency fee with their attorney. What has changed recently is the emergence of specialty finance companies that limit their work to the financing of litigation. These firms – which first appeared in Australia a decade ago, and are now thriving in the United Kingdom and the United States – typically invest in large-scale and complex commercial litigation, with investments (and thus legal fees) on the order of several million dollars.

Its a whole new part of the world to consider.

I wonder if this happens here? Anyone heard of “investments” like this in Hawaii cases?