In March 2014, United States district court judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that the Ecuadorian plaintiff's lead attorney, Steven Donziger, had used "corrupt means," including "coercion, bribery, money laundering and other misconduct," to obtain the 2011 court verdict in Ecuador. The judge did not rule on the underlying issue of environmental damages. While the US ruling does not affect the decision of the court in Ecuador, it has blocked efforts to collect damages from Chevron in US courts. Donziger has appealed. It later emerged that Chevron had paid a key witness in the case hundreds of thousands of dollars for his testimony, which he later admitted to have been false.