Pawa, Matt esq

see kivalina

===

exxon-lobbyist-investigated-over-hack-and-leak-environmentalist-emails-sources-2024-11-27

omg almost ended him

reuters

• FBI has been investigating Exxon Mobil consultant
• Cyber spying operation targeted hundreds of Exxon Mobil critics
• Leaked documents later cited by Exxon Mobil and others in court filings

WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The FBI has been investigating a longtime Exxon Mobil consultant over the contractor's alleged role in a hack-and-leak operation that targeted hundreds of the oil company’s biggest critics, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The operation involved mercenary hackers who successfully breached the email accounts of environmental activists and others, the sources told Reuters.

The scheme allegedly began in late 2015, when U.S. authorities contend that the names of the hacking targets were compiled by the DCI Group, a public affairs and lobbying company working for Exxon at the time, one of the sources said. DCI provided the names to an Israeli private detective, who then outsourced the hacking, according to the source.

In an effort to push a narrative that Exxon was the target of a political vendetta aimed at destroying its business, some of the stolen material was subsequently leaked to the media by DCI, Reuters determined. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that DCI shared the information with Exxon before leaking it, the source said.

Some environmental activists interviewed by Reuters say the hacking operation disrupted preparations for lawsuits by cities and state attorneys general against Exxon and other energy companies. Those lawsuits were modeled on litigation against the tobacco industry in the mid-1990s, which resulted in a watershed settlement and sweeping restrictions, opens new tab on cigarette sales.

The stolen material continues to be used today to counter litigation claiming the oil giant misled the public and its investors about the risks of climate change. As recently as April, an industry trade group that has received funding from Exxon cited one of the hacked documents, opens new tab – an internal memo sketching out the proposed litigation strategy of the environmentalists – in an effort to get the Supreme Court to quash a lawsuit filed by the city of Honolulu against Exxon and other energy companies. The case is pending.

Today we're looking at AI ETFs with Cinthia Murphy

The group, the National Association of Manufacturers, said it was not aware of the allegation the material had been hacked “and will consider whether to stop using it in future briefs.”

Exxon and DCI parted ways around 2020, according to two people familiar with the matter.

In a statement, Exxon said it “has not been involved in or aware of any hacking activities,” calling allegations to the contrary “conspiracy theories.” Reuters could not determine whether Exxon itself has also been the subject of the FBI investigation.

DCI said: “We direct all our employees and consultants to comply with the law.”

The leaks “sent a shudder through the environmental community,” said Kert Davies, director of investigations for an environmental group, the Center for Climate Integrity. Davies was among those targeted by the hackers. Matt Pawa, an attorney whose strategy drove much of the anti-Exxon litigation, said the leaks fueled a legal counteroffensive that nearly knocked him out of business.

“Those documents were directly employed by Exxon to come after me with all guns blazing,” he said in a recent interview. “It turned my life upside down.”

The investigation into the hack-and-leak operation comes amid growing concern among law enforcement agencies worldwide about how such cyberespionage schemes threaten to taint judicial proceedings.

The FBI has been investigating the broader use of mercenary hackers to tamper with lawsuits since early 2018, Reuters has previously reported. The Israeli private detective hired by DCI, Amit Forlit, was arrested this year at London’s Heathrow Airport and is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of hacking and wire fraud.

U.S. law enforcement authorities declined to comment on their efforts. They have not spoken publicly about the case against Forlit, which remains under seal. But in court hearings earlier this year, British lawyers acting on behalf of the American government alleged that Forlit had carried out hack-for-hire work for a “Washington-based PR and lobbying firm” and that he worked on behalf of an oil and gas corporation which wanted to discredit individuals involved in climate change litigation. In those hearings, the energy company and the lobbying firm were not identified.

Federal prosecutors have secured a related conviction: that of Forlit’s former business associate, private investigator Aviram Azari. Azari pleaded guilty in 2022 to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit hacking and aggravated identity theft, which included targeting the environmental activists. In court files, prosecutors did not assert any link between Azari and Exxon, DCI or Forlit. But one of the sources with knowledge of the FBI investigation said Forlit outsourced the hacking of the environmental activists to Azari.

Forlit’s attorneys did not respond to messages from Reuters seeking comment. A lawyer for Azari, Barry Zone, declined to comment.

Addressing his victims after he was sentenced last year to 80 months in prison, Azari said that “there will come a day” when he could provide more information about what he had done. “You don't know everything," he said.

CODENAME “FOX HUNT”

The hack-and-leak operation came on the heels of a series, opens new tab of media reports, opens new tab in 2015 contending that scientists at Exxon knew for decades that fossil fuels were warming the Earth as the company's top executives publicly said otherwise. Exxon has said, opens new tab that its internal research and public positions on climate change have been misinterpreted.

Under the hashtag “ExxonKnew,” groups such as Greenpeace called for legal action. So did then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who said the Department of Justice should probe the firm because “there’s a lot of evidence they misled people.” In November 2015, New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, announced he was investigating Exxon. Other suits followed.

With Exxon on the defensive, DCI swung into action to protect what was then one of the firm’s most important clients. Reuters interviewed a dozen former DCI employees to piece together the firm’s relationship with Exxon.

Founded in 1996 by veterans of Republican politics, DCI has worked for a variety of tobacco, telecom, hedge fund and energy firms. On its website, DCI says it handles public relations crises, litigation support, and opposition research.

Five former DCI employees said Exxon was long one of DCI’s biggest sources of revenue. One ex-employee said the oil giant regularly steered more than $10 million in business a year to DCI. Lobbying work alone for Exxon earned DCI at least $3 million between 2005 and 2016, according to publicly available data gathered by the transparency website OpenSecrets, opens new tab.

DCI’s staff in Washington kept track of social media chatter around the ExxonKnew campaign as well as moves made by state attorneys general, according to two people familiar with the matter. DCI also hired the Israeli detective Forlit, who tapped Azari to hack the accounts, according to one of the sources familiar with the FBI investigation. The operation’s code name was “Fox Hunt,” the source said.

Azari was the subject of a 2022 Reuters investigation that revealed how he and other private investigators used mercenary hackers in India to help wealthy clients gain the upper hand in legal cases. The report drew on a large dataset of Indian hacking activity, which shows that the spies tried to break into more than 13,000 email addresses over a seven-year period. Among the targets were more than 500 email addresses belonging to environmentalists, their funders, their colleagues and their family members, all of whom were targeted between 2015 and 2018.

Some details of the hacking campaign previously have been made public. In 2020 the Canadian digital watchdog group Citizen Lab identified 10 organizations, opens new tab targeted in a sweeping cyberespionage effort, including Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Reuters has learned the identity of other prominent targets, which include former Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, and the ex-wife of Schneiderman, New York’s then-attorney general.

Steyer's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. In an email, Schneiderman's ex-wife and former political adviser, Jennifer Cunningham, said she had long suspected that Exxon was behind the hack-and-leak effort.

Beginning in April 2016, news reports appeared alleging the ExxonKnew campaign was a politicized effort pushed by wealthy benefactors. Within 24 hours of one another, the Wall Street Journal, opens new tab and the Washington Free Beacon, opens new tab published stories based on an internal memo, opens new tab circulated about a meeting at the offices of the Rockefeller Family Fund. The memo said participants planned to discuss how to convince the public that “Exxon is a corrupt institution” and “delegitimize them as a political actor.”

The person with knowledge of the law enforcement investigation said the FBI assessed that the memo was obtained via the Forlit-led hacking operation. Separately, Reuters determined that the memo was subsequently leaked to the media by DCI.

Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson said that the paper did not comment on sourcing. The Wall Street Journal did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Exxon’s lawyers repeatedly drew on the hacked documents to support the company’s litigation.

After the New York attorney general filed suit against Exxon in 2018, for instance, the energy company’s lawyers cited the stolen Rockefeller meeting memo to argue that the case should be thrown out.

The lawyer representing Exxon, Theodore Wells, told New York’s Supreme Court in his October 2019 opening statement that Schneiderman had improperly formed “a political alignment with activists for the purpose of advancing an agenda directed at energy companies.”

New York lost the case two months later, when a judge ruled that the attorney general failed to prove that Exxon had defrauded investors by hiding the true cost of climate change regulation.

In an interview, Schneiderman said the leaked documents were used “to great effect” to bolster what he called Exxon’s “baseless claim that we were engaged in a politically motivated ‘witch hunt.’”

Wells and his law firm, Paul Weiss, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The memo or other hacked documents were also cited in court filings by Exxon against attorneys general in Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as in the company's 2018 effort, opens new tab to depose climate change attorney Pawa and other lawyers.

Much of the litigation is ongoing. On Tuesday, Maine became the ninth U.S. state to file a lawsuit accusing oil companies or allied groups of deceiving the public about climate change. Pawa said the industry has continued to invoke the hacked files in its effort to push back. “They were used over and over again,” he told Reuters. The net effect, he said, was “chilling people from exercising their constitutional rights.”

Reporting by Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing in Washington; editing by Chris Sanders and Blake Morrison

[

Raphael Satter

Thomson Reuters

Reporter covering cybersecurity, surveillance, and disinformation for Reuters. Work has included investigations into state-sponsored espionage, deepfake-driven propaganda, and mercenary hacking.

Christopher Bing

Thomson Reuters

Award-winning reporter covering the intersection between technology and national security with a focus on how the evolving cybersecurity landscape affects government and business.

exxon-texas-courts-critics-climate-crimes

guard uk

exxonMobil is attempting to use an unusual Texas law to target and intimidate its critics, claiming that lawsuits against the company over its long history of downplaying and denying the climate crisis violate the US constitution’s guarantees of free speech.

The US’s largest oil firm is asking the Texas supreme court to allow it to use the law, known as rule 202, to pursue legal action against more than a dozen California municipal officials. Exxon claims that in filing lawsuits against the company over its role in the climate crisis, the officials are orchestrating a conspiracy against the firm’s first amendment rights.

A US small-town mayor sued the oil industry. Then Exxon went after him

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/16/imperial-beach-california-exxon-mobil-climate-crisis)

The oil giant also makes the curious claim that legal action in the California courts is an infringement of the sovereignty of Texas, where the company is headquartered.

Eight California cities and counties have accused Exxon and other oil firms of breaking state laws by misrepresenting and burying evidence, including from its own scientists, of the threat posed by rising temperatures. The municipalities are seeking billions of dollars in compensation for damage caused by wildfires, flooding and other extreme weather events, and to meet the cost of building new infrastructure to prepare for the consequences of rising global temperatures.

Rule 202 in effect allows corporations to go on a fishing expedition for incriminating evidence. They are able to question individuals under oath and demand access to documents even before any legal action is filed against them.

Exxon wants to use the provision to force the California officials to travel to Texas to be questioned by the firm’s lawyers about what the company describes as “lawfare” – the misuse of the legal system for political ends.

Exxon claims in a petition to the Texas supreme court that it is entitled to question the officials in order to collect evidence of “potential violations of ExxonMobil’s rights in Texas to exercise its first amendment privileges” to say what it likes about climate science.

“The potential defendants’ lawfare is aimed at chilling the speech of not just ExxonMobil, but of other prominent members of the Texas energy sector on issues of public debate, in this case, climate change,” the company claims in its petition.

The oil giant’s critics say Exxon’s attempt to use claims of free speech to curtail the first amendment rights of others follows a pattern of harassment toward those who challenge the company’s claims about the climate crisis.

Patrick Parenteau, a law professor and former director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont law school, has described the company’s move as “intimidation” intended to make “it cost a lot and be painful to take on Exxon” whether or not the company wins its case.

Greg Abbott made the unusual move of writing to the state supreme court to advocate on the behalf of Exxon. Photograph: Bob Daemmrich/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

In a highly unusual move, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has written to the all-Republican court – half of whose members he appointed – in support of Exxon. He accused the California litigants of attempting “to suppress the speech of eighteen Texas-based energy companies on the subject of climate and energy policies”.

“When out-of-state officials try to project their power across our border, as respondents have done by broadly targeting the speech of an industry crucial to Texas, they cannot use personal jurisdiction to scamper out of our courts and retreat across state lines,” Abbott wrote.

In backing its claim, Exxon’s petition to the Texas supreme court gives the example of the Oakland city attorney, Barbara Parker, who in 2017 “issued a press release seeking to stifle the speech of the Texas energy sector or, as she likes to refer to it, ‘BIG OIL’”.

The press release said: “It is past time to debate or question the reality of global warming … Just like BIG TOBACCO, BIG OIL knew the truth long ago and peddled misinformation to con their customers and the American public.”

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment)

The company also names the then San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, because he accused fossil fuel companies of launching a “disinformation campaign to deny and discredit” the reality of global heating, and pledged to hold the companies responsible “to account”.

Exxon has, in addition, targeted an environmental lawyer in Boston, Matthew Pawa, who represents some of the California municipalities. The firm describes him as “an outspoken advocate of misusing government power to limit free speech” and alleges that Pawa “recruited” the California cities and counties to sue Exxon.

“Those lawsuits are an affront to the first amendment,” the company claims.

Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor and co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, said Exxon had a long history of attempting to bully its critics into silence.

“Now that the arguments have moved into the legal sphere, this feels to me like an extension of the sort of harassment, bullying and intimidation that we’ve seen in the scientific sphere for the last two decades,” she said.

Oreskes said that the legal strategy is also part of a broader public relations campaign to paint the company as a victim of radical environmentalists and opportunistic politicians when Exxon argues that it should be heralded for its efforts to combat the climate crisis.

“Exxon Mobil has for a long time now tried to make themselves out to be the victim, as if somehow they’re the innocent party here,” she said.

The Texas supreme court is considering the case after a lower court backed Exxon’s attempts to use rule 202 against the California officials. The ruling was later overturned on appeal.

The appeal court sympathised with Exxon by acknowledging “an impulse to safeguard an industry that is vital to Texas’s economic well-being” and saying that “lawfare is an ugly tool by which to seek the environmental policy changes” pursued by California municipalities. But the appeal court said the defendants did not have sufficient direct connection to Texas for the case to be heard in the state.

Exxon has ‘a track record of promoting half truths, misrepresentations and in some cases outright lies’

Naomi Oreskes

Exxon has tried to head off climate litigation before with lawsuits claiming that the attorney generals of Massachusetts and New York were violating the company’s rights by investigating it. Those moves were blocked by the Massachusetts supreme court and by a federal court.

If the Texas supreme court allows its rule 202 bid to proceed, Exxon might expect a more sympathetic hearing for its claims in a state court system that has shown deference to big oil.

Exxon is facing a barrage of other lawsuits across the US. A number accuse the company and other fossil fuel firms of breaching consumer protection laws by propagating misinformation about climate science.

Oreskes said Exxon went further than most other oil companies in seeking to hide the evidence of its own scientists collected about global heating and in running a disinformation campaign.

“They’re pushing their freedom of speech as an issue because more than any other company, it’s been proven by people like me and others that they have a track record of promoting half truths, misrepresentations and in some cases outright lies in the public sphere,” she said.

“This is so well documented that unless they can come up with some strategy to defend it, they’re in potentially pretty serious trouble.”

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story

===

vice  https://www.vice.com/en/article/43qw3j/meet-the-lawyer-trying-to-make-big-oil-pay-for-climate-change

when you want to sue the largest, most powerful companies on the planet, Steve Berman is the guy you call. He forced Jack-in-the-Box to pay $12 million for causing an E. coli outbreak that killed four children. He won a $215 million settlement against Enron for defrauding investors and wiping out employee retirement accounts. He represented auto dealers in a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Volkswagen for cheating on diesel emissions.

Berman is best known, though, for suing big tobacco in the 1990s. At the end of that fight, he helped negotiate a $206 billion settlement from cigarette makers like Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Brown & Williamson for causing cancer. It remains the largest legal settlement of its kind in history.

:{

But Berman is now working on a lawsuit that could be even bigger: He is suing five of the world’s most powerful oil companies for causing climate change. He represents Oakland and San Francisco in a lawsuit filed last September demanding that Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP pay billions for sea walls and other defenses against ocean rise.

}::{

Just like with tobacco, the case could hinge on whether these companies lied to the public about the dangers of their business model. Berman has evidence that companies like Exxon knew burning oil causes climate change as early as the 1950s. Internally, oil companies took steps to protect their offshore oil rigs and Arctic pipelines from global warming while publicly they denied the science—the same way cigarette makers did research into cancer while denying their product was harmful. “Defendants stole a page from the Big Tobacco playbook,” the lawsuit alleges.

}::{

Legally speaking, that argument might not be such a stretch. “The parallels to tobacco are quite clear,”Carroll Muffett, the president of the Washington, DC–based Center for International Environmental Law, told me.

Still, nobody has won a lawsuit like this and the oil companies I contacted didn’t seem to think Berman’s would be any different. “Should this litigation proceed,” a spokesperson for Chevron wrote in an email, “it will only serve special interests at the expense of broader policy, regulatory, and economic priorities.” Other, less biased observers also have doubts. “I’m not that sure actually,” said Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary law professor who has researched the parallels between oil and tobacco. “It seems obvious that at some point the defendants will say, ‘But look, there was demand for our product.’”

}:

:{

Berman himself failed to win a similar lawsuit in 2012, when a court dismissed his attempt to hold Exxon and about two dozen other fossil fuel producers responsible for the sea rise swallowing an Alaskan village. But a lot has changed since then. Science linking individual corporations to climate change is more sophisticated. Incriminating oil company documents are surfacing. 

New court decisions—especially a recent rulingagainst lead paint companies—are removing legal barriers. Suing big oil could be one way to win real environmental gains in the Trump era. “We have the federal government claiming there’s no climate change, we have the EPA rolling back,” Berman told me in an interview from his office on the 33rd floor of a Seattle high-rise. “[We can] use the law to accomplish what politicians won’t do."

The reason not to dismiss Berman is that he has a history of proving doubters wrong. When he entered the legal fight against tobacco companies in the 1990s, mainstream opinion was that he would be unsuccessful. The owners of brands like Marlboro and Camel had crushed hundreds of lawsuits attempting to link cigarettes to cancer and emphysema. “No one had ever won a tobacco case,” Berman said. His own law partner was wary of getting involved. But in late 1998, the industry surrendered and agreed to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars. *The People Vs. Big Tobacco*, a book about the case, described Berman as one of the “crucial players.”

}:

:{

The stakes are even higher in his big oil lawsuit.Berman is not just trying to get oil companies to pay for seawalls in the Bay Area. In a broader sense he’s attempting to hold them responsible for endangering all human life on earth. “This is different in kind from anything else,” Timothy Crosland, the director of a UK-based climate law group called Plan B, told me. “Once you get started, you get one case that goes through, this is an avalanche. It’s got the potential really to bring down the fossil fuel companies.'

}::{

For insight into Berman’s worldview it helps to go back to his 1960s upbringing in Highland Park, a Chicago suburb. “It was a really evolutionary time,” he said. “I grew up with a mother who was one of the first women to burn her bra.” His dad wanted to be a career Army officer but grew disillusioned by the Vietnam War and ended up running an insurance company. “He kind of became liberal himself,” Berman said.

Others he knew evolved from progressive to militant. They set off bombs and ran from the law. “They were elder brothers of some of my close friends and I’ve never seen them again,” Berman said. Though he’s not sure if they officially belonged to the Weather Underground, the left-wing organization that bombed US government buildings and banks in the 1970s and broke Timothy Leary out of jail, “they were in that genre of people out there doing radical stuff.” Berman chose to embrace the law. “The way to make change is to get trained in what the establishment does and make change through the process,” he later told the publication Super Lawyers.

}:

:{

Berman went to law school and moved out to Seattle, where he got hired by a firm that mostly did defense work for companies in industries like insurance. Berman was part of a smaller team at the firm that sued companies instead.In 1993, he met with a parent whose child had lost a kidney after eating at Jack in the Box and getting food poisoning. “I remember sitting in the room thinking, ‘This could have been my kid,’” he said. “I was so choked up I could barely talk.” His superiors at the firm didn’t want to take the case. “So I said, ‘I’m out of here.”

}::{

Berman and a colleague Carl Hagens formed their own firm, Hagens Berman. He’d wanted to set out on his own for some time and here was the perfect excuse. Two years later they settled with Jack in the Box for $12 million.

That case was tiny compared to what came next. In 1996, Washington’s attorney general hired Berman’s new firm to represent the state in a wave of public health lawsuits against tobacco companies. Soon Berman represented 13 states. “The quiet youthful [lawyer] worked brutal hours to make up for his firm’s small size, arriving at his office at six AM and staying until nine or ten PM six days a week,” reads the book *Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry*. His law partner was skeptical, according to Berman. “He was afraid we would lose the case,” he said. “If we devoted all our time to a losing effort and we didn’t have any income we could go under.”

}:

:{

It was a legitimate concern. By then hundreds of tobacco lawsuits had failed. Cigarette makers argued smoking was a personal choice. They pointed to research—often funded by the tobacco industry —casting doubt on the link between cigarettes and cancer. But several factors aligned to make the industry vulnerable to litigation. 

A series of whistleblowers revealed that tobacco companies knew smoking is addictive and causes cancer. Secret corporate documents showed companies did market research on how to target childrenwith ads and branding.Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore filed a lawsuit demanding tobacco companies pay the healthcare costs of smokers who’d become sick. And by 1998, 46 states were demanding the same.

Berman gave the opening statement at the trial in Washington in front of hundreds of people who had crowded into a Seattle courthouse. “I had a big poster that said, ‘The Industry’s Five Big Lies,’ and I went through each one,” he recalled. By then the industry was ready to surrender. Berman, Moore and others had been holding meetings with its leaders to negotiate the terms. On November, 1998, Big tobacco officially agreed to pay $206 billion to 46 states. It received immunity from lawsuits similar to the ones led by Moore and Berman. Yet it was still a massive victory. “We were pretty damn happy,” he said.

}:

How can you prove that oil dug out of the ground by Exxon is causing a tiny Alaskan village to disappear?

:{

Berman now had a game plan for defeating powerful industries: Accuse them of misleading the public to protect revenues, then find plaintiffs who are suffering the consequences. In the late 2000s, he heard about a coastal village in Alaska called Kivalina that would have to be relocated because of rising oceans. The move could cost up to $400 million, according to his lawsuit, and the Army Corps of Engineers said climate change is to blame. Berman sued Exxon, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and 20 other fossil fuel producers on behalf of the villagers, arguing these companies spread doubt and confusion about climate change knowing communities such as Kivalina are in danger. Exxon, for instance, had run full-page New York Times ads about “unsettled science."

"You’re not asking the court to evaluate the reasonableness of the conduct… You’re asking a court to evaluate if somebody conspired to lie,” Berman told :{The Atlantic:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: at the time.

}:

:{

Berman flew to Kivalina at one point. The village is built on an island off the west coast of Alaska. Its 400 or so indigenous residents had watched helplessly as shoreline disappeared, winter storms got fiercer, and waves lapped closer to the school. There was a pervasive feeling of despair. “The island is sad, sad that it’s going away,” he said. The magnitude of climate change hit him on the flight home. “You could see acres of dying trees from the pine bark beetle,” he said. “That was really striking.” A federal court dismissed the lawsuit, deciding that who’s to blame for climate change is a job best left to entities like Congress or the White House. But the real issue was causation. How can you prove that oil dug out of the ground by Exxon is causing a tiny Alaskan village to disappear?

}::{

“There is no realistic possibility of tracing any particular alleged effect of global warming to any particular emissions by any specific person, entity, group at any particular point in time,” wrote US District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong. It’s a tough obstacle to surmount. “In climate change there’s a lot of diffuse actors,” said the University of Calgary’s Olszynski. “It’s not just the oil companies.”

}::{

But there are several reasons Berman’s new lawsuit against big oil could be more successful. Whereas Kivalina was filed in federal court, he wants to represent the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California state court, which he thinks may be less likely to decide the case raises political questions outside of its jurisdiction. And, he added, “Some people believe that there are more conservative judges on the federal bench.” The defense team for big oil is fighting to get the suit heard federally. The case was “going to be mired down for the next three or four months in a procedural battle,” Berman predicted.

there have also been big leaps in climate science. Researchers like Richard Heede have calculated that close to two-thirds of greenhouse gases emitted over the last 150 years can be traced back to just 90 companies. Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips are in the top ten. “We have better science,” Berman argued. “We think causation will be easier to prove.”

}:

:{

Financial damages from climate change are also more quantifiable.San Francisco estimates sea-level rise could threaten $49 billion in property. “The major coastal cities in America and abroad have people worried about this,” he said. “That’s a big advancement since the Kivalina case.”

}::{

Incriminating oil industry documents, meanwhile, continue to surface. A report released in mid-November by the Center for International Environmental Law has new evidence that big oil was warned about the risks of global temperature rise nearly 50 years ago. “There seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe,” explains a 1969 study prepared for the American Petroleum Institute by two Stanford scientists. This wasn’t a one-off thing. “From the late 1960s onwards up into the 80s those warnings from their own scientists grew more and more urgent,” Muffett, the November report’s co-author, told me. An internal Exxon memo from 1981 states that carbon emissions could “produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic—at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population.” By then the company had calculated that reducing its carbon footprint would hurt revenues. Internally, the industry began to protect itself from climate change. Companies designed taller offshore oilrigs and pipelines able to withstand melting permafrost. “[They] had a responsibility to warn the public,” Muffett said. Instead, Exxon, BP, Chevron and Shell formed a group known as the Global Climate Coalition that argued climate science “is not well understood” into the 90s.

}::{

These are clear parallels to the cancer-denying days of big tobacco. But in recent years the comparison has become harder to make. Big oil now publicly admits the existence of climate change. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue that requires global engagement and action,” a Chevron spokesperson wrote to me. Berman must convince a court that earlier industry denial campaigns created lasting damage. Even with better science, questions of responsibility still loom. “In the case of global climate change, a molecule of carbon is literally around the world in seven days,” Scott Segal, an attorney who defends energy companies, told the *Washington Post* in July. “The requisite causation needed for nuisance suits is missing and unprovable.”

}::{

That’s how the law has traditionally viewed things. Yet a recent ruling in California against lead paint companies suggests the law’s view on causation is evolving. “This may not sound like it has anything to do with climate change,” Olszynski told me, “but it does.” For 17 years, three paint companies—ConAgra, NL Industries, and Sherwin-Williams—argued in court that the lead paint they manufactured couldn’t be linked to specific houses where people got sick. But last month the California Court of Appeals ruled that their marketing “implied lead paint was safe,” even though the companies knew it was not. “That’s a really important point,” Olszynski explained. It could mean there’s a stronger case that oil companies are legally responsible for sea-rise damage in San Francisco and Oakland. They marketed and sold a product that they knew is causing climate change.

}::{

You could make the same argument about the coal industry. Or carmakers such as General Motors. “If the oil company took the barrel of oil out of the ground but it was consumed in the car, how do you apportion liability?” Olszynski asked. But he thinks that the legal fight against tobacco companies provides a case study for how these types of challenges can be beaten. “Guys like Steve were like visionaries,” he argued. “That’s an important story because it talks about the speed to which the legal system can change.”

}::{

As far as Berman is concerned the story isn’t over. On climate change he thinks it’s just getting started. If a judge decides his case can be heard—a big if, considering that no lawsuit against big oil has made it to that stage—then Berman can call on Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron to make internal reports and research into climate change available. “[I’m] dying to get to those documents,” he said. “I’m convinced they’re going to be smoking hot.”

}::{

As our interview came to a close I asked Berman to describe the best-case scenario for all this. “Imagine if I could get ten or 15 cities to all sue and put the same pressure on the oil companies that we did with tobacco companies and create some kind of massive settlement,” he said. He acted as if it was the first time he’d thought of the idea. But I got the feeling it wasn’t.

}::{

Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change. Follow him on Twitter.

}:

TAGGED:POLITICS SAN FRANCISCO LAW LAWYERS BIG-OIL BIG TOBACCO

beware BS

walrath 12/17

https://eidclimate.org/calif-climate-suits-not-climate-theyre-bringing-energy-producers/

Several California communities have recently brought suits as part of a larger political campaign to attack the oil and gas industry, but a profile of one of the lawyers leading the cases published by VICE this morning leaves no question about the motive of these cases. The plaintiffs aren’t seeking to protect themselves from climate change; they’re trying to “bring down the fossil fuel companies.”

VICE’s article profiles Steve Berman of the notorious anti-corporate law firm Hagens Berman. VICE ticks off Berman’s accomplishments:

He forced Jack-in-the-Box to pay $12 million for causing an E. coli outbreak that killed four children. He won a $215 million settlement against Enron for defrauding investors and wiping out employee retirement accounts. He represented auto dealers in a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Volkswagen for cheating on diesel emissions.

Berman is best known, though, for suing big tobacco in the 1990s. At the end of that fight, he helped negotiate a $206 billion settlement from cigarette makers like Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Brown & Williamson for causing cancer. It remains the largest legal settlement of its kind in history.

Somehow VICE forgot to mention the time Hagens Berman had to pay $10.8 million to its own clients[not named, botl water unsafe?]  after it was judged that they failed to act in their clients’ best interest. The firm was also fined for “bad faith advocacy” after a U.S. District judge ruled that Hagens Berman had moved forward with several cases even though they knew the cases were “baseless.” The judge said that one of Hagens Berman’s allegations “gives new meaning to ‘frivolous.’”

Turning to his lawsuits against the oil and gas industry, VICE continues:

The stakes are even higher in his big oil lawsuit. Berman is not just trying to get oil companies to pay for seawalls in the Bay Area. In a broader sense he’s attempting to hold them responsible for endangering all human life on earth. “This is different in kind from anything else,” Timothy Crosland, the director of a UK-based climate law group called Plan B, told me. “Once you get started, you get one case that goes through, this is an avalanche. It’s got the potential really to bring down the fossil fuel companies.” (emphasis added)

That’s what this is and always has been about. Santa Cruz and San Francisco may be legitimately concerned about the effects of climate change on their communities, but their concern is being co-opted by money-hungry lawyers and environmental activists seeking to eliminate fossil fuel companies.

Don’t believe that Berman’s only in this for the money? Per VICE:

As our interview came to a close I asked Berman to describe the best-case scenario for all this. “Imagine if I could get ten or 15 cities to all sue and put the same pressure on the oil companies that we did with tobacco companies and create some kind of massive settlement,” he said. He acted as if it was the first time he’d thought of the idea. But I got the feeling it wasn’t. (emphasis added)

Berman’s already succeeded in securing the largest settlement ever and the only way he can outdo himself is to set his sights on the industry that literally powers the world.

But even if Berman doesn’t get to a settlement, if he can just convince a judge to hear his case, he may get everything he thinks he needs:

As far as Berman is concerned the story isn’t over. On climate change he thinks it’s just getting started. If a judge decides his case can be heard—a big if, considering that no lawsuit against big oil has made it to that stage—then Berman can call on Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron to make internal reports and research into climate change available. “[I’m] dying to get to those documents,” he said. “I’m convinced they’re going to be smoking hot.” (emphasis added)

This dogged pursuit of industry documents tracks with a memo Berman’s new partner, #ExxonKnew activist Matt Pawa, sent to billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer. Pawa wrote a memo in 2015 pitching Steyer on the idea of convincing Californian communities to sue the oil and gas industry over climate change. The memo suggests that “simply proceeding to the discovery phase of a global warming case would be significant.”Pawa’s firm was**acquired**by Hagens Bermanearlier this year “in an effort to pursue climate change litigation against companies,” and Pawa is now leading the San Francisco and Oakland cases.

There is hope that these cases will not progress that far. In her 2009 decision in a related case, U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong wrote, “There is no realistic possibility of tracing any particular alleged effect of global warming to any particular emissions by an specific person, entity, group at any particular point in time.”

“The litigants misunderstand nuisance law,” attorney Scott Segal told the :{Washington Post:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: earlier this year. “In the case of global climate change, a molecule of carbon is literally around the world in seven days. The requisite causation needed for nuisance suits is missing and unprovable.”

Having failed to pass a national climate policy out of Congress and after watching President Trump dismantle President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, these activists are completely sidelining democracy and trying to push their agenda through the courts. If successful, a handful of extremists will have imposed their radical anti-fossil fuel policy on the entire country, which has repeatedly rejected their efforts.

They're About “Bring[ing] Down” Energy Producers - EID Climate

https://eidclimate.org › calif-climate-suits-not-climate-th...

Dec 22, 2017 — Berman is best known, though, for suing big tobacco in the 1990s. At the end of that fight, he helped negotiate a $206 billion settlement from ...

ref AP

june 2018 no lnx orig

nEW YORK (AP) —New York City’s attempt to hold five of the world’s biggest oil companies responsible for damage from global warming didn’t seem to impress a judge during oral arguments Wednesday to determine if a lawsuit can proceed.

U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan questioned the city’s standing to bring the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages from BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

At one point, Keenan asked a city lawyer if New York City had investments in the companies it was suing. At another, he noted the many cars owned by the police department and the many trucks operated by fire and sanitation personnel.

And at least twice, the judge asked if the city was hiding an emissions case in language meant to seem it was instead targeting the companies’ production and sales operations.

“Aren’t you trying to dress a wolf up in sheep’s clothing?” he asked attorney Matthew Pawa, who represented the city.

“Aren’t the plaintiffs using the product?” Keenan asked. “Does the city have clean hands?”

“Yes, the city uses fossil fuels,” Pawa responded.

:{

}:

Pawa recalled successful litigation to hold tobacco companies responsible for the harms of cigarette smoking and said he was asking Keenan “to apply very old law to new facts.”

The judge did not rule immediately.

The January lawsuit came after similar litigation was filed by the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Cruz in California.

:{

}:

Theodore Boutrous, arguing for the oil companies, called global warming an “important, thorny issue” and added that “lawsuits are not the way to deal with this.”

Boutrous said the lawsuit was trying to hold the companies responsible for the “way civilization and humankind has developed over the ages ... back to the industrial revolution.” He suggested it was an issue better left up to Congress.

If the lawsuit survives, Boutrous said, it would encourage similar litigation.

:{

}:

“It really would involve everybody suing everybody for living our lives the way we do and using the power sources that we have,” he said.

==

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/417416-suing-americas-manufacturers-calling-them-a-public-nuisance-wont/

Across the country, the jobs of manufacturing workers are being threatened by trial attorneys and politicians targeting manufacturers with baseless lawsuits based on the legal theory of “public nuisance,” attempting to hold manufacturers responsible for harms that are often far outside of their control. While trial lawyers have pursued such lawsuits for years, there has been a dramatic increase over the past year, as lawyers team up with states, cities and counties to sue manufacturers over climate change. This is why, one year ago, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) launched the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP) to help bring attention to the coordinated campaign behind these lawsuits and has made it clear that they will do nothing to improve the environment but could do serious damage to our legal system and our manufacturing industry.

California Manufacturers and Technology AssociationPresident Dorothy Rothrock has said the law firms are in it for the money. Indeed, the private attorneys representing the municipalities stand to earn hundreds of millions of dollars if they get a favorable ruling in court.

To date, 14 municipalities and one state have filed such litigation against dozens of energy manufacturers.{mosads}

So far, each lawsuit that has been considered in federal court has been dismissed, with the judges finding several flaws in the municipalities’ arguments. In dismissing the cases brought by San Francisco and Oakland, U.S. District Judge William Alsup rightly told the plaintiffs that the court is not the proper branch of government to address the issue of climate change:

“The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” Judge Alsup wrote in his opinion. “The Court will stay its hand in favor of solutions by the legislative and executive branches.”

U.S. District Judge John Keenan agreed with Judge Alsup’s logic, dismissing New York City’s climate lawsuit against five of the country’s largest energy companies in July. Another fatal flaw in New York City’s argument, Keenan found, was that the plaintiff was attempting to hold only manufacturers accountable for climate change when it is a problem to which everyone contributes. “Aren’t the plaintiffs using the product?” Judge Keenan asked the city’s outside counsel. “Does the city have clean hands?”

These dismissals are an encouraging sign that the outstanding lawsuits against manufacturers — filed by Rhode Island, Baltimore, Boulder and others — will face a similar fate in the coming months.

It is also encouraging that a growing number of public officials are speaking out against the litigation. For example, in Colorado, the state’s newly elected attorney general Phil Weiser recently criticized the climate lawsuit filed by three municipalities in his state, saying he is “uncomfortable with the litigation because the case for it hasn’t been made.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunterhas also commented on the lawsuits, saying, “In short, the courts are no place to determine national environmental policy. And public nuisance is not a theory the judges should employ in these kind of cases.”

Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill said these suits “commandeer the rightful role of Congress to pass policy for the nation and are improper in terms of trying to legislate extraterritorial economic policy from the states in which they originate.”

We will continue to fight on behalf of manufacturing workers whose jobs are at stake. Manufacturing is too critical to the American economy to allow this threat to go unanswered.

NOTE: This post has been updated from the original to correct Judge Keenan’s first name and to clarify the lawsuits that have been dismissed.

Lindsey de la Torre is the Executive Director of the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, a project of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action. She previously served in the office of Presidential Personnel in the George W. Bush White House and in the Office of Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

TAGS ABUSE OF THE LEGAL SYSTEMCLIMATE CHANGELAWSUITSNUISANCE

omg see BS gao:

Amicus Brief in Texas Reveals New Info on :{Climate Litigation Industry:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

February 14, 2022

Government-transparency group Energy Policy Advocates (“EPA”) has filed anamicus brief with the Texas State Supreme Court, in a case considering Exxon Mobil’s Rule 202 petition against California municipalities like San Francisco and Oakland and their former “climate” lawyer, Matt Pawa.  That action was filed by the company to obtain pre-suit discovery against some of the parties […]

READ MORE »

eric s, healey

https://climatelitigationwatch.org/motion-by-pawa-to-dismiss-subpoena/

https://www.desmog.com/2020/04/30/energy-policy-advocates-horner-exxon-legal-climate/

no lnx docs

‘Energy Policy Advocates’ and the Fossil Fuel Boosters Attacking Legal Efforts to Hold Climate Polluters Accountable

ByDana Drugmand on

Apr 30, 2020

While fossil fuel companies defend against mounting climate liability lawsuits in court, their surrogates are working in parallel to target the attorneys, academics, and institutions supporting these lawsuits. This defensive strategy involves vigorous public records requests, and in some cases legal action or intervention, to try proving a supposed conspiracy by those working to hold polluters accountable.

ExxonMobil has itself argued that attorneys general and municipal officials that have sued the company are engaged in a conspiracy to take down Big Oil. That argument hasn’t gained traction in court, but this hasn’t stopped operatives tied to fossil fuel funding from trying to take up that charge.

A month after the New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager ruled for Exxon in a securities fraud suit brought by the state attorney general, a group called Energy Policy Advocates filed a motion to intervene in the closed case. The group, along with board member Rob Schilling, a radio and internet journalist, asked for access to a specific set of sealed documents in the case: communications between the attorney general’s office andMatt Pawa, an environmental attorney active in climate liability lawsuits.

In its filing EP Advocates echoed Exxon’s legal tactics by alleging that Pawa had spearheaded a “coordinated campaign with activists and ‘prospective funders,’ going after climate denialism [sic] — along with a bunch of state and local prosecutors nationwide.”

In late February, Ostrager denied the motion, saying that the group had not “demonstrated a sufficient interest in the merits of the underlying securities fraud case.” Noting that the proceedings in the now-closed case had been open and transparent, and the documents made available “with the exception of minor redactions,” Ostrager  wrote in his decision that New York’s contact with Pawa was “no secret,” and that EP Advocates and Schilling had themselves admitted in their filing “that they have already obtained substantial information concerning those communications from various sources.”

Ostrager also denied a cross motion by Pawa to appear as an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” in the matter, in support of the attorney general’s opposition to EP Advocates and Schilling’s motion and to shed light on the group’s apparent ties to fossil fuel interests.

“We documented in our amicus brief the connections between this organization and the coal industry, and between some of the individuals that have been working on behalf of this organization and Exxon,” Pawa told DeSmog. “So it’s pretty obvious who they are, they’re an industry front group.”

According to Pawa’s brief, “publicly available documents indicate that EP Advocates has a former coal attorney on its board,[horner?[  and is associated with at least one entity funded by coal money; one of these affiliated entities is run in part by someone who previously accepted money from Exxon to promote the view that virtually all climate science is ‘junk science.’”

‘Transparency’ Groups Funded by Coal?

Energy Policy Advocates’ stated goal is to use public records laws to “bring transparency to the realm of energy and environmental policy,” according to the group’s website. Although the organization incorporated in Washington State in 2018, its mailing address and most of the people associated with it appear to be based in Virginia. And while EP Advocates claims it doesn’t take policy positions, its consistent probing of nearly anyone involved in climate liability litigation appears to align well with the interests of fossil fuel corporations.

EP Advocates board member Mike Gardner, an attorney based in Cleveland, is a former coal company lawyer and a former mine inspector, according to his biography on the group’s website.

Energy Policy Advocates website

From the website of Energy Policy Advocates

EP Advocates is tied in through a partnership with another organization, Government Accountability & Oversight, and its Climate Litigation Watch project. The Climate Litigation Watch website launched in May 2018 purportedly to counter the increase in climate litigation against fossil fuel companies.

As Climate Liability News reported, “The website, while claiming to be a neutral clearinghouse for documents, records and information on climate change lawsuits, is run by an attorney with a long history of ties to the coal industry, and strikes an antagonistic tone in describing these lawsuits as a ‘perversion of the justice system’ and the modern equivalent to burning witches.” Energy Policy Advocates uses the Climate Litigation Watch website to publish documents obtained through records requests.

The closely related organization Government Accountability & Oversight describes itself as a public interest law firm, but the people running this nonprofit have ties to the fossil fuel industry, including coal giant Murray Energy. And its board member Chris Horner had been paid directly as a regulatory counsel by coal company Alpha Natural Resources.

Horner previously worked with several “free market” groups peddling climate denial including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal). Peabody and Arch Coal have both funded E&E Legal, where Horner worked as a senior legal fellow and where “junk science” proponent Steve Milloy (who has worked for tobacco giant Philip Morris and for Murray Energy) currently works as a senior policy fellow and board member.

Peabody also funded a group called the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, which Horner co-founded with attorney David Schnare and that later folded following a heated legal dispute between the two. Horner then started Government Accountability & Oversight along with founding board member Matthew Hardin, who also is a board member for Energy Policy Advocates.

Government Accountability & Oversight and Energy Policy Advocates do not disclose any information about funding, but there are clear ties to the coal industry with Gardner and Horner both having worked as counsel to coal companies.Although Energy Policy Advocates claims to focus on transparency, it does not mention its ties to coal in its many public records requests to state attorneys general.

“Never in the numerous FOIAs [Freedom of Information Act requests] to state AGs etc. does Horner or his associates reveal that their patron has a material interest in the outcome of the lawsuits (accountability for pollution) and ultimately the regulation of global warming pollution,” Kert Davies of Climate Investigations Center, a watchdog group tracking fossil fuel front groups and campaigns, said in an email.

Energy Policy Advocates did not respond to requests for more information about the group’s funding sources or its affiliation with Government Accountability & Oversight.

Targeting Climate Scientists and State Attorneys General

As one expert familiar with these organizations told DeSmog, EP Advocates and Government Accountability & Oversight are the latest iterations of Horner-affiliated groups that harass climate scientists and climate advocates.

“They go through cycles, and they do the same anti-science climate denial work under the guise of being pro-American, pro-transparency,” said Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit that works to protect scientists from legal attacks and intimidation efforts.

:{

}:

Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, the predecessor to both industry front groups, had pursued FOIA requests and litigation against high-profile climate scientists including Penn State Professor Michael Mann, Dr. James Hansen, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, Texas Tech University Professor Katherine Hayhoe, and Texas A&M University Professor Andrew Dessler.

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) is the former name for the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.

“They have this angle where they try to undermine science or the credibility of the scientists, or the people otherwise advocating for action on climate change,” Kurtz said of Horner and his associates. “They can create a lot of hassle for folks on the receiving end of these records requests.”

The tactic of using public records laws to target scientists also has a “chilling effect,” she said. Kurtz explained that she knows scientists who have been FOIA’d by Chris Horner and said that their colleagues are now hesitant to communicate with them.

Kurtz contended that Horner’s requests constituted a “fishing expedition, where they’re looking for jargon they can take out of context, technical information that they can twist.”

While Kurtz said that Horner and his associates have “stepped back a touch from debating the actual science,” they continue to go after scientists who try to speak out or engage in policy discussions relating to climate change. “They have targeted scientists that have worked with attorneys general,” she said.

They also appear to be targeting the attorneys general directly. Both EP Advocates and Government Accountability & Oversight have brought suits under public records laws against several Democratic state attorneys general. Most recently, in March, the latter group sued Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh for documents involving Pawa, the environmental lawyer. The group filed a similar suit against Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson in early February.

EP Advocates and Government Accountability & Oversight have also sued attorneys general for information on the hiring of fellows at the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at NYU Law School, a program funded in part by former New York Mayor and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

EP Advocates and Government Accountability & Oversight are seeking to advance a “law enforcement for rent” narrative that privately funded attorneys are placed in state attorney general offices to pursue a politically motivated agenda. Sources including a law professor and a spokesman for the State Impact Center told DeSmog this narrative is unfounded, as there is nothing unusual or improper about attorneys general taking on outside assistants.

‘Tool of Industry’ Pursuing a ‘Broad-Scale Fishing Expedition’

Following an unsuccessful attempt to intervene in the New York attorney general lawsuit against Exxon, Energy Policy Advocates is now trying to intervene in another attorney general lawsuit against Exxon and other fossil fuel companies.

On March 10, EP Advocates filed a motion in the First Circuit Court of Appeals to file an amicus brief in support of fossil fuel company defendants in a climate liability lawsuit brought by the Rhode Island Attorney General. The deadline to file amicus briefs in this case has passed, so EP Advocates is again attempting to intervene belatedly. The group says it has records including handwritten and typed notes that reveal the objective of the lawsuit is to obtain a sustainable funding stream.

Rhode Island, as well a dozen cities and counties across the country, have sued fossil fuel companies for monetary damages, meaning EP Advocates’ “revelation” amounts to nothing. But nevertheless the group is seeking to defend the fossil fuel companies in court, arguing that the Rhode Island suit and similar climate nuisance cases are an “impermissible use of the courts” — an argument that the companies themselves are making.

As Pawa explained, Energy Policy Advocates appears to be simply a “tool of [the fossil fuel] industry.” He said the people associated with the group have tried to make his life harder for awhile, “and they’ve been completely unsuccessful.”   

Beyond Pawa and the attorneys general, EP Advocates appears to be in pursuit of communications of anyone involved in climate lawsuits, including attorneys, academics, advocacy organizations, and public officials.

Targets of its records requests have included thelaw firm Sher Edling, which is helping represent state and municipal plaintiffs in climate liability cases; the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development/Center for Climate Integrity, a Washington, DC, based nonprofit that advocates for progressive climate and development policies; and EarthRights International, an environmental law group involved with a climate damages lawsuit brought by several Colorado communities against fossil fuel producers, as well as several cases involving alleged Indigenous and human rights violations by Big Oil firms.

In California, EP Advocates is seeking records of correspondence between Richmond Mayor Tom Butt and the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as records between Imperial Beach municipal officials and Vermont Law School Professor Pat Parenteau. Richmond and Imperial Beach are each suing the fossil fuel industry for climate-related damages.

EP Advocates also is targeting Parenteau (who is this reporter’s former climate law professor) in its records requests in Baltimore, Maryland and in Rhode Island, both of which have sued fossil fuel companies.

Parenteau said he hasn’t been in communication with public officials in Baltimore or in California or Rhode Island. “It’s just a broad-scale fishing expedition,” he said.

Parenteau and Davies of the Climate Investigations Center both say these attempts by EP Advocates to dig up dirt on opponents of Exxon and other fossil fuel firms show that these companies and their allies are frightened of potential legal liability and of losing financial and public support.

“The whole financial world is turning on a dime, so the oil companies are getting more and more desperate,” Parenteau said.

:{

}:

“They’re really scared,” Davies added. “The coal industry is the first to fall, and it’s falling hard. But they’re fighting much harder in the face of that. They’re fighting like a trapped raccoon in the corner.”

https://www.climatedocket.com/

oct 7 2020

Karen Savage

To prove its allegations that California communities are conspiringagainst it in a series of climate liability suits, Exxon asked the Texas Supreme Court to force officials from those communities to provide documents and testimony about the lawsuits.

In a petition filed Friday, Exxon asked the court whether the state has personal jurisdiction over the officials, who are from the cities and counties of San Francisco, Santa Cruz and San Mateo, the cities of Oakland, Imperial Beach, as well as Marin County. Attorney Matthew Pawa, who formerly represented some of the municipalities, is also named.

It is Exxon’s latest attempt to obtain information from Pawa and the California officials. The company alleges they are involved in a large-scale conspiracy to penalize the company for its “views” on climate change.

In the lawsuits, the municipalities allege the company has known for decades that their products overwhelmingly drive global warming, and instead of warning the public, engaged in long campaigns to cloud its understanding of the science. The communities are now grappling with costly climate impacts such as wildfires, extreme temperatures and sea level rise and are seeking compensation for related damages, as well as for infrastructure upgrades needed to protect their communities from future impacts.

Exxon, which first filed the discovery request in Jan. 2018, contends the suits are an attempt to “suppress Texas-based speech about climate and energy policies.” It wants the officials to turn over documents and submit to depositions that could be used as evidence in future legal action.

Tarrant County District Judge R.H.Wallace, Jr. initially allowed Exxon to proceed with discovery, ruling against the California municipal officials, who have argued that the Lone Star State does not have jurisdiction over them.

That ruling was reluctantly overturned by a state appellate court in June.

“The law simply does not permit us to agree with Exxon’s contention that the potential defendants have the purposeful contacts with our state needed to satisfy the minimum-contacts standard that binds us,” wrote a three-judge panel of the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Bonnie Sudderth urged the Texas Supreme Court to reconsider what is required in order for the state to have jurisdiction over defendants.

Exxon is now asking the high court to do just that.

“Review is necessary to safeguard Texas’s sovereign interest in adjudicating lawsuits that affect the speech of its citizens and a core component of its economy,” Exxon attorneys wrote in the petition.

Exxon further argues thatmunicipal officials “attacked protected speech and associational activities in Texas” when they filed climate liability suits against the company.

The municipalities “seek to wrest Texas policy decisions from Texas citizens by diminishing the pocketbooks and stifling the speech of its industry,” Exxon’s attorneys told the court. “That is precisely the type of intentionally targeted conduct thatgives rise to personal jurisdiction.”

In addition to the California suits, Exxon is a defendant in nearly all of the dozens of climate change-related lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies by communities across the nation since 2017.

The oil giant made similar allegations of free speech violations in a lawsuit filed to stop investigations by  the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general, who were digging into allegations that Exxon deceived  the public about the risks posed to their climate by their products.

That case was emphatically dismissed in 2017 by U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni, who said Exxon’s claims were “implausible” and brought “on the basis of extremely thin allegations and speculative inferences.” Caproni called allegations by the company that the investigations were politically motivated a “wild stretch of logic.”

Both AGs later filedlawsuits against Exxon for fraud. A New York judge ruled last year that the state failed to prove its allegations. A suit filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is proceeding in state court.

The court is expected to decide whether it will accept the petition for review in the coming months.

FILED UNDER: CALIFORNIA CLIMATE LAWSUITS, LIABILITY LITIGATION

==

==

https://www.ciel.org/about-us/environmental-law-board-of-trustees/matthew-pawa/

After many years of practicing law on his own, Matt decided to merge his law firm with the law firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. He is co-leading Hagen Berman’s environmental practice group with the managing partner of that law firm.

Attorney Matthew was a general practice litigator who has represented governments, non-profit groups, citizens, and large and small businesses in a wide range of environmental, constitutional, commercial, real estate, and personal injury cases, including class actions and individual cases. Matthew has represented the State of New Hampshire for a decade in a groundwater pollution case that has recovered over $100 million to date and resulted in a $236 million verdict against ExxonMobil in 2013 after a three month trial. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly recognized Matthew in 2013 as a Massachusetts Lawyer of the Year for his work on the New Hampshire case. Prior to entering private practice, he served as an assistant county prosecutor in Burlington, Vermont. Matthew is the recipient of the national Scribes Award for excellence in legal writing and the Fred G. Leebron Prize for constitutional writing.

Matthew also has pioneered the use of tort theories against greenhouse gas polluters in cases such as Connecticut v. American Electric Powerand Kivalina v. ExxonMobil. He regularly argues in federal and state appellate courts and handles civil trials for a wide array of clients. He is a regular speaker at bar association events and law schools, has written a number of law review articles, has received a national award for excellence in legal writing and is frequently quoted in the press on legal topics.

Matthew holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.S. from Cornell University.

http://eelegal.org/2016/02/11/schnare-combatting-climate-change-in-the-courts/

On February 10th, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (“ACS”) hosted a panel discussion on legal approaches and activities associated with “combatting” climate change through legal action. Topics covered were RICO prosecutions, climate torts and the Supreme Court’s stay of the Clean Power Plan. The session was organized and moderated by Lisa Heinzerling, the attorney who was brought into EPA to manage the legal analysis of how to extend the agency’s powers beyond the limits of the Clean Air Act in order to implement the environmental activists’ climate agenda, and who had previously won the Massachusetts v. EPA case enabling EPA to regulate carbon dioxide.

The discussion panel consisted of Richard E. Ayres, Founding Partner, Ayres Law Group, LLP; Co-Founder, Natural Resources Defense Council; Sharon Eubanks, Partner, Bordas & Bordas, PLLC; lead counsel for the United States in United States v. Phillip Morris, et al. (the RICO tobacco case);

Matthew F. Pawa, President, Pawa Law Group, P.C., who has failed repeatedly in his civil climate change tort claims against hydrocarbon companies; and the obligatory “other side of the argument” panelist, Roger R. Martella, Jr., Partner, Sidley Austin, LLP; former General Counsel, Environmental Protection Agency and representing parties opposing EPA’s Clean Power Plan. In addition, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) offered remarks.

...

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2016/05/18/green-activists-and-state-ags-collude-against-climate-dissenters

BS schnare

--

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/**2020-01-10**/exxon-climate-trial-loss-won-t-be-appealed-n-y-a-g-says

New York won’t appeal a ruling by a judge who rejected the state’s claim that Exxon Mobil Corp. misled investors for years about the oil giant’s internal planning for risks associated with climate change.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who took office after the suit was filed, announced the decision late Friday without giving a reason. James nevertheless hailed the trial in state court as a landmark -- “the first time in history” Exxon was forced to answer publicly for its messaging around climate change.

“As we have done for the last year, my office will continue to fight to ensure companies are held responsible for actions that undermine and jeopardize the financial health and safety of Americans across our country,” James said in a statement.

Read More: Exxon Says N.Y. Used Fraud Claims to Score Political Points

James’s defiance belies the decision by New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager, who rejected all the state’s claims.  Exxon has never taken the economic impact of climate change on its business seriously, “and that truth was laid bare at trial,” she said.

In its securities fraud suit, filed in October 2018, New York accused Exxon of lying to shareholders about its use of a “proxy cost” for carbon in its internal accounting to prepare for future climate change regulations. That alleged lie suggested to the public that Exxon was being more prudent about climate risks than it really was, the state said.

Ostrager, in a 55-page ruling in December, said the attorney general’s office “failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Exxon Mobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor.”

Read More: Former Exxon CEO Says Climate Change ‘With Us Forever’

Irving, Texas-based Exxon previously accused New York of filing the lawsuit in a politically motivated attempt to target the company. That argument was bolstered on the final day of the trial when the state dropped its two most serious fraud claims against the company after failing to back them up with any evidence during the trial.

On Friday, a non-profit energy industry organization filed a motion to intervene in the case in an effort to unseal communications between the Attorney General’s office and a well-known plaintiffs lawyer who is involved in various lawsuits against the energy industry.

Energy Policy Advocates, based in Washington state, said in its filing that the lawyer, Matt Pawa, shopped around anti-Exxon litigation strategies in pitches to various AG’s office, including Massachusetts, which has also sued Exxon.

“Documents filed in this matter will shed light on the important ongoing debate about the propriety of the New York Attorney General’s actions in this matter,” the group said in its filing. “Regardless, they will show how such costly if failed litigation came to pass, or at least key influences.”

Neither the New York Attorney General’s office nor Pawa immediately responded to requests for comment on Saturday.

hmmn BS

https://climatelitigationwatch.org/ not bogus?  not exactly praise?

~ pawa: https://climatelitigationwatch.org/player-cards/#cbp=/?html-inline-1525723590806

...environmental attorney who built his career on prosecuting corporations. His legal strategy centers on liability law, with a foundation in racketeering and public nuisance common law. Pawa previously served on the board of the Climate Accountability Institute, an organization that has guided legal thought on prosecuting energy companies through RICO statutes. Pawa has made numerous presentations to governing bodies and Attorneys General associations, attempting to persuade them to contract out legal work to private firms and to sue larger corporations. For example, in March 2016, Pawa gave a legal briefing to a group of attorneys considering legal action against ExxonMobil.

Relevant Connections: The Rockefeller Foundations; the Global Warming Legal Action Project; Climate Accountability Institute; Eric Schneiderman; Peter Frumhoff; Bill McKibben; Center for International Environmental Law

Financials:

• Pawa is well connected to the Rockefeller Foundations, often acting as a liaison between their funds and the legal community. At several Rockefeller Family Fund environmental strategy meetings, Pawa was their legal expert. They have paid him $225,000 for his counsel.
• The Global Warming Legal Action Project is Pawa’s primary means for pursuing fossil fuel companies. The project coordinates private firms with state Attorneys General on climate cases. As a result, Pawa enjoys a friendly relationship with public legal officials across the country. According to public records, his firm has been paid more than $3 million to run the Project, with most funded provided by the Rockefeller family’s organizations. [Source: $3 million has been found according to the reported 990s of foundations]

Of Note:

• Pawa is on record saying that, “by bringing these cases over and over again, the judiciary [and] the public get used to the idea of liability,” a persistent mentality evident in his work
• He has sued a number of industries for alleged violations of environmental laws and regulations. In 2004, he filed the nation’s first tort against major greenhouse gas emitters. In 2008, he worked on a team that sued 24 energy companies for their supposed roles in Alaskan coastal destruction. In 2013, Pawa represented New Hampshire in a suit against ExxonMobil, which he won, rendering a $236 million dollar verdict.
• Pawa misled the Wall Street Journal’s Amy Harder about his involvement at the Al Gore’s “publicity stunt” press conference to announce the targeting of opponents of the global warming agenda.

Sources:

• Inside Climate News: “The Man Who Makes Greenhouse gas Polluters Face Their Victims in Court,” by Amy Westervelt (6/22/10)
• Wired:“The Coming Tide Of Global Climate Lawsuits, by Rachel Morris (4/20/10)
• NY Times: “Flooded Village Files Suit, Citing Corporate Link to Climate Change,” by Felicity Barringer (2/27/08)
• FindLaw: The State of New Hampshire v. Exxon Mobil Corporation & a. (accessed 12/2/17)
• The Observer: “Al Gore and Eric Schneiderman Hail ‘Best, Most Hopeful Step’ Against Climate Change,” by Will Bredderman (3/29/16)
• Fox News: “Email bombshell: Attorneys General worked with Green groups to punish political opponents,” by Chris Horner (4/18/16)

==

horner climate lawsuits

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/01/26/competitive-enterprise-institute-climate-denial-target-nbc-cities-liability-suits

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Climate Denial Efforts Target Media, Cities Filing Liability Suits

By Guest • Saturday, January 26, 2019

Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

The conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute has been busily pressing forward with its mission to promote climate denial, using high-profile tactics like full-page ads in major newspapers. But it is also working behind the scenes, filing records requests to dig for information from cities filing climate liability suits and academics studying the topic.

As the science has grown definitive in tying global warming to the burning of fossil fuels, even oil companies have been forced to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus and back away publicly from climate denial efforts. But CEI continues to double down on their mission to claim the science is not settled.

CEI made a splash this week by purchasing full-page ads in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal taking issue with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd and NBC for refusing to give airtime to denialists during his Dec. 30 show about climate change.

The think tank has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry and has long worked to promote climate denial. And as municipalities have begun to sue fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, CEI has filed briefs and launched other campaignsdefending them.

According to Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center, CEI’s most recent push is likely motivated by the increasing number of those lawsuits and investigations of the fossil fuel industry.

“CEI has a personal interest in how these lawsuits proceed because they had a contract with ExxonMobil Foundation from the 1990s — they got over $2 million through 2007 when Exxon abruptly dropped them,” said Davies, adding that he expects lawyers pressing suits against the company would want to see the contracts between CEI and Exxon during that period.

CEI’s tactics go beyond its attempts to sway public opinion.

Last year, CEIsued UCLA to obtain emails the organization said were exchanged between two UCLA climate law professors and state attorneys general offices involved in investigations of the oil giant.

An ethics complaint filed by another fossil fuel industry-backed group in December against then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood echoes areport written by CEI legal fellow Chris Horner. The report relied on public records requests to allege that attorneys general are involved in a coordinated scheme by private interests to hold oil giants responsible for climate change. That alleged conspiracy includes Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is also investigating Exxon for possible fraud.

Horner has also filed information requests with municipalities filing suit against the oil and gas industry, including Richmond and San Francisco. In those requests, he is seeking records related to a climate litigation-related briefing he said took place at Harvard in 2016 between activists, private attorneys and public employees of various states’ attorney general’s offices. 

In July, he requested communication belonging to staff members in the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, after it became the first U.S. state to attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change by filing suit against 21 oil and gas companies.Horner’s request was for communication between special assistant attorney general Greg Schult, senior policy advisor Matthew Lenz and legal experts involved in climate litigation in other municipalities, including attorney Matthew Pawa, Niskanen Center chief counsel David Bookbinderand director of climate policy Joseph Majkut.

Horner is also on the board of directors of the non-profit Government Accountability and Oversight, the organization behind Climate Litigation Watch, which posts public records obtained in an attempt to “expose the network of influence involving the litigation surrounding climate change.”

CEI has used full-page ads in major newspapers in previous campaigns to try to discredit climate action.

In one ad that appeared in The New York Times in 2016, CEI — along with more than 40 signatories — claimed that attorneys general across the country were abusing their power by attempting to silence the “debate” on climate science.

Between 1997 and 2014, those signatories and the organizations they representreceived more than $10 million from Exxon and the ExxonMobil Foundation and theyreceived more than $21 million from the Koch brothers, who have long funded climate denial efforts in support of their fossil fuel businesses.

Today, full-page ads in theWashington Post can cost $100,000 and more. Ads in the Wall Street Journal can top $325,000.

In a press release, CEI said the ads push back on Todd and NBC’s decision to “exclude guests who disagree with alarmists and calls for a real and open debate about the impacts of climate alarmist policies.”

“Sometimes, journalists like Chuck Todd are persuaded to join the activists in shutting down legitimate debate about policy issues and in those cases, we feel a duty to push back in defense of our rights and our policy positions,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email, adding that the organization’s requests for public records are made on their own initiative, and as part of this body of work defending their principles.

“Americans of all political stripes tune into NBC’s Meet the Press with the expectation that the great political issues of the day will be debated vigorously by guests representing a full range of viewpoints,” said CEI PresidentKent Lassman.

Because CEI does not disclose its donors, it’s unclear who is funding the current ads, but it has previously received funding directly from David Koch, as well as coal giantsMassey Energy Company andMurray Energy Corporation.

ExxonMobil was a publicly-acknowledged contributor to CEI for a number of years.

“In 2006, however, ExxonMobil publicly announced that it would cease its support for CEI and a number of other groups,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email.

NBC did not respond to a request for comment.

The ads fit into a long-running strategy to cloud the issue of climate science to the public.

CEI was named in a 1998 email to the American Petroleum Institute’s global climate science communications team as a possible funding recipient in a campaign to implement a “Climate Action Plan.”

According to that plan, “victory will be achieved” when people and the media are convinced there is significant uncertainty in climate science and “media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognizes the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current ‘conventional wisdom.'”

Davies said in addition to potentially having to face an examination of its relationship with Exxon in the course of climate litigation, CEI has other concerns.

Davies pointed to a study published this week showing Greenland’s ice ismeltingfaster than previously thought and a recent Yalepoll showing that 73 percent of people in the U.S. understand climate change is occurring and 62 percent understand it is mostly human-caused.

“The evidence is in front of people, the weather‘s messed up, the climate’s messed up, the public opinion is moving away from CEI, and then they strike out at a national news broadcast for not including this extreme minority opinion that there’s nothing to worry about,” Davies said.

==