Deval Patrick: Credible Candidate or Corporate Captive?

Coca-Cola's former General Counsel/Executive VP/Corporate Secretary Deval Patrick wants to become the next governor of Massachusetts. Should he prevail over his opponents in the Sept. 19 statewide Democratic primary, progressive and pro-labor forces within the Democratic Party will suffer a terrible setback.

Why would any Democrat vote for Mr. Patrick? As one financial contributor to Mr. Patrick commented after learning how closely he is tied to corporate interests and opponents of labor and human rights around the world, "He works for Republicans. He lives like a Republican. And he invests like one."

Deval Patrick has said of his years working for corporations like Coca-Cola, Texaco and Ameriquest: "I have never left my conscience at the door." Perhaps that is because he never even consulted his conscience when helping Big Business inflict great hardship, suffering and despair upon millions of people while pocketing millions for himself.

As a top officer of The Coca-Cola Co. and a director of Coca-Cola's largest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Mr. Patrick became a key player in an international culture of unbridled greed. The company's behavior was characterized by a pattern of lies, deception, immorality, corruption and abuse of labor, human rights and the environment.

He misled the public repeatedly about the kidnappings, torture and murders of union leaders at Coke's bottling plants in Colombia. In July 2001, the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers union filed a lawsuit based, in part, on the Alien Tort Claims Act (which has been a federal statute since 1789). It charged that Coca-Cola's bottlers in Colombia "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders."

Mr. Patrick announced in 2004 that he would be stepping down from his positions at Coke. He implied that one reason he was leaving was because then-CEO Douglas Daft reneged on assurances to him that the company would authorize an "independent" investigation of the charges. But after carefully crafting the illusion that he was taking some sort of principled stand on an issue that had haunted Coke's top management for years, Mr. Patrick fell silent.

Why? It seems that after Mr. Patrick left the general counsel's post at Coca-Cola, he signed back on as a "consultant" with Coke and pocketed a fast $2.1 million. The Boston Herald reported on April 8, 2005: "Under the deal...Patrick cannot sue the company for any reason and has promised not to work for another company or reveal any company secrets through Jan. 1, 2007."

So, it's not exactly a coincidence that Mr. Patrick hasn't said a word about Colombia or any other questionable Coca-Cola activities around the world.

Ray Rogers, Director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, contends that "No one who has served as a top executive of Coca-Cola should ever hold any position of public trust, particularly such a high elective office as that of governor. Patrick has pocketed millions from Coke to hide and cover up its crimes and immoral behavior and to keep his mouth shut."

International Labor Rights Fund Executive Director Terry Collingsworth wrote in Oct. 2003: "Led by Deval Patrick, the Coca-Cola legal team has reached new lows in the so-called corporate responsibility movement. Unable to dispute the facts, (about collaboration with paramilitaries in Colombia), Coca-Cola is pursuing a corporate shell game defense. The company claims that the people who were murdered and tortured under the Coca-Cola signs in the Coca-Cola bottling plants that send profits back to Coca-Cola in Atlanta have no recourse against Coca-Cola and should instead subject themselves to further risk of violence by seeking justice in Colombia. Mr. Patrick's team seeks to maintain an incredibly unjust, uncivil and unfair system that allows companies to enjoy the best of both worlds in their overseas operations, by profiting from human rights violations while limiting liability to a local entity that is a mere facilitator for the parent company's operations. This represents a grave threat to innocent workers worldwide."

Patrick set the pattern for his tainted tenure as Coke's top lawyer when he held the positions of General Counsel and Vice President at Texaco from 1999 to 2001. At the time, Texaco was the defendant in an Alien Tort Claims lawsuit charging that the company inflicted "cultural genocide in Ecuador."

According to the Boston Herald (Aug. 29, 1999), the lawsuit was filed by Amherst environmental lawyer Cristobal Bonifaz. "To...Cristobal Bonifaz, the consequences are these: widespread skin, respiratory and other diseases; a rise in miscarriages; increased cancer rates and risks for as many as 30,000 impoverished Indians and settlers; and widespread environmental damage.

" 'They poisoned the rivers, killed the fish and made the people sick," said Bonifaz, an Ecuador native who launched a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Oriente ["A 2,000-square-mile swath of rainforest"] residents in U.S. District Court ..."

"He claims Texaco used cheap and dirty extraction techniques, spilling waste into creeks and rivers rather than spending more to pump it back into the ground, as he said is common practice elsewhere. In addition, pipe breaks over the years dumped more raw crude into the jungle than the Exxon Valdez spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989, he says.

Pointing out Patrick's position at Texaco and his role in subverting efforts to hold the giant oil company accountable, the Herald article went on:

"As Texaco fights plaintiffs' charges that it inflicted 'cultural genocide' in Ecuador, the company in the past year hired a new general counsel well-known in Massachusetts, Deval Patrick of Milton, a former chief of the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division. He contends the plaintiffs shouldn't have access to U.S. courts, only those in Ecuador - a move Bonifaz says would effectively kill the lawsuit. Patrick declined an interview request."

Patrick not only sought to quash any hope that Ecuadorians might gain a measure of justice; he joined other business and industry lobbyists' efforts to render the Alien Tort Claims Act null and void. Under this statue for more than two centuries, it has been possible for foreigners to sue perpetrators of fundamental human rights violations in U.S. courts, but corporate powerbrokers like Deval Patrick want no part of it.

Arthur Berney, a professor of constitutional law at Boston College Law School, who filed a brief supporting the Ecuadorians' lawsuit against Texaco, said: "This has the potential of being a groundbreaking case...It is going to cause the corporations of the United States to think twice about how they conduct their businesses abroad, whether it be the kinds of harm that occurred with Texaco, or in the workplace, as with some of the footwear manufacturers in Indonesia."

But not if Mr. Patrick has anything to say about it.