Joe Berlinger received a reprieve in his ongoing fight against orders to turn over unused footage from his 2009 documentary "Crude" to Chevron.
The Second Circuit Court has granted the documentary filmmaker a temporary stay until June 8, when a motions panel will hear his request for a longer stay that would last throughout the appeals process.
This represents a rare piece of good news for the director, whose legal challenges to the oil company’s subpoena have faced a series of setbacks.
On Thursday, New York Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Berlinger’s request for a stay pending appeal, but granted him a 10-day extension for when he needed to give Chevron the film.
Under the terms of the extension, he would have had only until May 31 to turn over footage.
Kaplan had earlier ordered Berlinger to comply with Chevron’s subpoena and give the oil company access to some 600 hours of raw footage from his film. Berlinger is appealing that decision in Second Circuit Court.
"Crude" documents a protracted legal fight between Chevron and 30,000 Ecudorians living in the Amazon rain forest. They maintain that Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001, failed to clean up pollution in a local oil field leading to environmental devastation and disease.
Chevron maintains that footage cut from Berlinger’s movie shows misconduct on the part of the plaintiff’s lawyers that undermines their $27 billion class action.
