intervenors juliana
assholery trifecta: DACA, sedition, intervenor
STEVE MARSHALL Attorney General of AlabamaEdmund G. LaCour Jr. (AL Bar No. 9182-U81L) Solicitor General Thomas A. Wilson (AL Bar No. 1494-D25C) Deputy Solicitor General STATE OF ALABAMA OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 501 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36130 Telephone: (334) 242-7300 Fax: (334) 353-8400 Edmund.LaCour@AlabamaAG.gov Thomas.Wilson@AlabamaAG.gov Counsel for Proposed Defendant-Intervenor State of Alabama [additional counsel listed on signature page] UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF OREGON EUGENE DIVISION KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants. Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-AA
PROPOSED DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS: STATES OF ALABAMA, ALASKA, ARKANSAS, GEORGIA, INDIANA, KANSAS, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, MONTANA, NEBRASKA, NORTH DAKOTA, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH, AND WEST VIRGINIA’S REPLY
[:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{**:{RAGA leaders were also involved in :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{Texas AG Ken Paxton's [lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the presidential election results in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, }:claiming changes made to accommodate voters in the COVID-19 pandemic were unlawful. Among those signing on to the suit were RAGA's Hunter [okla, quit 2021] , Landry, Marshall [alabama], Moody, Reyes, Schmitt and Wilson, as well as the Republican AGs ofArkansas,Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota,South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.]]
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{{In July 2017, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a group of Republican Attorneys General from nine other states, includingMarshall, plus Idaho Governor Butch Otter, in threatening the Donald J. Trump administration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that had been put into place by president Barack Obama. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery, III subsequently reversed his position and withdrew his participation from the proposed suit on August 31st. Slatery went further to urge passage of the DREAM Act.[5][6] The other Attorneys General who joined in making the threats against Trump included Lawrence Wasden of Idaho, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Doug Peterson of Nebraska, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.}}:
5 2017 NEELA B may
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26052017/children-climate-change-lawsuit-fossil-fuel-api/
the country’s most powerful fossil fuel lobbies have asked a federal judge for permission to withdraw from a groundbreaking climate change lawsuit, a stark about-face after the groups voluntarily intervened in the case two years ago and fought assiduously to have it dismissed.
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The federal lawsuit, *Juliana et al v. United States*,was brought in August 2015 on behalf of 21 youths, now aged 9 to 21, over the federal government’s alleged failure to rein in fossil fuel development and address climate change. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) joined the federal government’s side as intervenors, saying the case was a “direct threat” to their businesses.
It is unusual for intervenors to seek to withdraw from a case. API and AFPM filed withdrawal motions in federal district court in Eugene, Oregon, on Thursday, and NAM filed a similar motion on Monday. It is unclear when federal magistrate judge Thomas Coffin will rule on their requests.
The intervenors and the Justice Department have repeatedly filed motions to have the case dismissed. But federal judges have ruled against them, and the case could go to trial as early as November. In the interim, lawyers for both sides could seek documents from one another and question people under oath through what is known as the discovery process.
Julia Olson, one of the lead counsels for the plaintiffs and executive director of the environmental group Our Children’s Trust, said the industry lobbyists are seeking to withdraw in order to avoid handing over potentially damaging information.
Two separate investigative series in 2015, first by InsideClimate News and then the Columbia University School of Journalism/Los Angeles Times, revealed that the oil industry conducted cutting-edge research on climate change as far back as the 1970s before launching a multibillion-dollar campaign in the 1990s to cast doubt on climate science and delay action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
“After these youths sued the government, the trade associations pleaded their members’ interests would be destroyed if they weren’t allowed to be in the case, but now they are running for the hills,” Olson said in a statement. “Now, they’ve decided they’re better off being on the sidelines than subjecting themselves to discovery.”
The plaintiff lawyers have said they will try to depose key federal officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson was chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil from 2006 to January 2017 and also served as president of API.
Frank Volpe, an attorney for all three groups, did not answer a request for comment. API also declined to respond.
In their motions, the defendants’ lawyers said withdrawing would streamline the discovery process. “Withdrawal of an intervenor will reduce the number of parties to this proceeding and, accordingly, reduce the amount of discovery, reduce discovery-related motions practice, and avoid the possibility of duplicative discovery efforts and duplicative proceedings,” the defendants wrote in the API and AFPM motions.
The intervenors joined in part because of their concerns that the Justice Department under President Obama might not mount a sufficiently vigorous defense. NAM Senior Vice President and General Counsel Linda Kelly indicated that her group seeks to leave the suit in part because its interests align more closely with the Trump administration.
“As the dynamics have changed over the last several months, we no longer feel that our participation in this case is needed to safeguard industry and our workers,” Kelly said in an emailed statement. “We fully support the efforts of the remaining defendants to push back against the plaintiffs’ ill-conceived legal theory of regulation by court decree, and we are confident they will ultimately prevail.”
The lawsuit is based on a legal concept called the public trust doctrine, which argues that the government holds resources such as land, water or fisheries in trust for its citizens. Climate litigators contend that the government is a trustee of the atmosphere, too. The doctrine’s power flows from the Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the Vesting, Posterity and Nobility Clauses of the Constitution, the plaintiffs maintain.
In 2015, environmental plaintiffs in the Netherlands,South Africa and Pakistan, as well as Massachusetts and Washington state,won similar human rights or constitutional cases that force authorities to more aggressively cut carbon emissions.
The plaintiffs in Julianaargue that the federal government has known for at least 50 years that combustion of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and damages the climate. Because it chose to take actions to promote and subsidize fossil fuel use and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions, the government violated their right to protection from environmental degradation under the trust doctrine, the suit alleges.
“The overarching public trust resource is our country’s life-sustaining climate system, which encompasses our atmosphere,” the Julianapleading says. “As sovereign trustees, Defendants have a duty to refrain from ‘substantial impairment’ of these essential natural resources.”
Until their requests to withdraw, the intervenors and the federal government had countered that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue and that the constitutional arguments they used lacked merit.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.36019/9781978807648-005/pdf
Chapter 4“The Politics of Predatory Delay Climate Crimes of Political O ...
84C hapter 4“The Politics of Predatory Delay”C limate C rimes of Political O m
very long table/chart
http://climatecasechart.com/case/juliana-v-united-states/
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/591f5971ff7c508aa9101950/1495226738202/Doc+53+Intervention+Oral+Argument+Transcript.pdf
Juliana v United States of America Court Proceedings January 13th, 2016
For the Plaintiffs: MS. JULIA A. OLSON MR. PHILIP L. GREGORY MR. DANIEL M. GALPERN (Appearing by phone)
For the Federal Defendants: MR. SEAN DUFFY (Appearing by phone)
For Proposed Intervenor-Defendants: MR. QUIN M. SORENSON [Quin M. Sorenson. (202) 736-8000. Fax: (202) 736-8711. Sidley Austin LLP 1501 K St., NW Washington, DC 20005. PRO HAC VICE. TERMINATED: 01/04/2017 ]
quin M. Sorenson is practicing law since 2002 (currently in Washington) and has over 19 years of experience in Religious Institutions and related legal activities. Browse the details of Quin M. Sorenson to see if it is a trusted Religious Institutions attorney with perfect skills and positive reviews from clients. To make the best and most responsible decisions, take a look at education, experience, Bar information and peer reviews of this lawyer. When checking an attorney named "Quin M. Sorenson", do not miss referrals from friends and family. If you have enough information and would like to arrange a personal meeting with this attorney, you can use the phone number 717-645-2408 or other contacts (email, contact form, chat) and make an appointment (initial consultation) at 1501 K St., N.W., 20005, Washington
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MS. C. MARIE ECKERT
5/17
in Young People’s Climate Lawsuit Against U.S., Federal Magistrate Recommended Denial of Motions to Certify Case for Appeal. A magistrate judge in the federal district court for the District of Oregon recommended denial of motions by federal defendants and by intervenor oil and gas trade groups to certify the district court’s denial of motions to dismiss the lawsuit brought by young people alleging that the defendants violated rights protected by the Constitution by allowing greenhouse gas emissions to accumulate. The magistrate rejected the intervenors’ contention that the issue of whether the political question doctrine barred the plaintiffs’ claims should be certified. The magistrate judge said that the court would be capable of granting equitable relief that would not “micro manage” federal agencies or make policy judgments in the event the plaintiffs prevailed. The magistrate “emphatically rejected” any contention that the topic of “climate change” was “formed and determined by political values and is thus a non-justiciable political question” and said that climate change was “quintessentially a subject of scientific study and methodology, not solely political debate” and that courts were “particularly well-suited for the resolution of factual and expert scientific disputes.” The magistrate further indicated that the issues in the case “and the fundamental constitutional rights presented” would not be “well served by certifying a hypothetical question to the Court of Appeals bereft of any factual record or any record at all beyond the pleadings.”
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The magistrate judge indicated that the federal defendants’ significant admissions regarding the threats posed by human-induced climate change had, “if anything, … enhanced” the plaintiffs’ due process claim and that any appeal would be premature because the taking of evidence was necessary to “flesh out… critical issues.” The magistrate judge also was not persuaded that certification should be granted for the public trust claim, indicating that the federal defendants were relying on an overly expansive reading of Supreme Court precedent to narrow the scope of the federal public trust obligations. In recommending denial of certification on the issue of the plaintiffs’ standing, the magistrate said that the alleged harms to the plaintiffs from climate change should not be “minimalized by the fact that vast numbers of the populace are exposed to the same injuries.” The magistrate noted that numerous factual questions would be addressed at trial (e.g. “Is climate change occurring?” “If so, to what extent is it being caused by fossil fuel production?), and said the defendants and the intervenors “would put the cart before the horse” by certifying hypothetical questions before the relevant factual issues were addressed. The parties were given 14 days to file written objections to the magistrate judge’s recommendation, followed by 14 days to file a response to the objections.
22 PP
STEVE MARSHALL Attorney General of AlabamaEdmund G. LaCour Jr. (AL Bar No. 9182-U81L) Solicitor General Thomas A. Wilson (AL Bar No. 1494-D25C) Deputy Solicitor General STATE OF ALABAMA OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 501 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36130 Telephone: (334) 242-7300 Fax: (334) 353-8400 Edmund.LaCour@AlabamaAG.gov Thomas.Wilson@AlabamaAG.gov Counsel for Proposed Defendant-Intervenor State of Alabama [additional counsel listed on signature page] UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF OREGON EUGENE DIVISION KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants. Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-AA
PROPOSED DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS: STATES OF ALABAMA, ALASKA, ARKANSAS, GEORGIA, INDIANA, KANSAS, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, MONTANA, NEBRASKA, NORTH DAKOTA, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH, AND WEST VIRGINIA’S REPLY
[**RAGA leaders were also involved in Texas AG Ken Paxton's [lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the presidential election results in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, claiming changes made to accommodate voters in the COVID-19 pandemic were unlawful. Among those signing on to the suit were RAGA's Hunter, Landry, Marshall, Moody, Reyes, Schmitt and Wilson, as well as the Republican AGs ofArkansas,Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.]]
MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR LIMITED INTERVENTION. (ECF Nos. 475, 508, 509)
7/21
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sought to file an amicus brief that argued that the court should deny the intervention motion without prejudice. NRDC reasoned that the states would not be prejudiced if intervention were deferred until the time of any proposed consent decree that might affect the states’ interests.
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natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sought to file an amicus brief that argued that the court should deny the intervention motion without prejudice. NRDC reasoned that the states would not be prejudiced if intervention were deferred until the time of any proposed consent decree that might affect the states’ interests.
07/06/2021 Amicus Motion Download Motion filed by New York and other states for leave to file brief as amici curiae. Six states, led by New York, filed a motion for leave to file a brief as amici in support of the plaintiffs; they asserted an “interest in correcting proposed intervenors’ erroneous assertions about purported collusion between the parties” in two lawsuits referenced in the motion to intervene, as well as an interest in correcting the proposed intervenor states’ “incomplete picture of the effects that federal action to address climate change will have on States and state residents.”
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see api4
...“Time is on industry’s side.”
With a new era of environmental deregulation under way, issues ranging from the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to offshore drilling in the Arctic are landing in the courts for final say. The stakes are enormous for the industry, which is simultaneously confronting a wave of lawsuits that seek billions of dollars in damages for climate-change impacts. Among the defendants areAPI members such as ExxonMobil.
Unlike government and the public, industry can afford to wait. “In many of these matters, litigation goes on decades and decades,” said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “Time is on industry’s side.”
American Petroleum Institute, et al.
Time has worked to API’s advantage. The institute was founded in 1919 amid congressional demands to nationalize the oil industry during World War I, forcing competing companies to band together for survival. In the near-century since, API has helped thwart regulations by tying them up in court.
Archives at the Lenexa Federal Records Center are located 60 feet below ground in limestone caves.]
Buried in limestone caves 60 feet below Lenexa, Kansas, is an esoteric slice of API history. Yellowing records at the National Archives annex there are all that remain of a 1940 lawsuit so expansive that three pages of the complaint simply list defendants — all 379 of them.
United States of America v.American Petroleum Institute,et al. alleged widescale collusion and price-fixing by 22 major oil companies and their 300-plus affiliates, which controlled a total of $9 billion in assets (the equivalent of $160 billion today). The U.S. Department of Justice charged that the industry was unlawfully consolidating — with the institute’s help — and vowed to take the antitrust case all the way to the Supreme Court.
“The industry is dominated and controlled by the 22 defendant majors who transact more than 85 percent of the total business of the industry,” the Justice Department wrote in its complaint. “Where normal competition once flourished, the rapid development of the completely integrated defendants has substantially destroyed competition.”
Read more about Big Oil's unlikely alliance with the White House ]
American Petroleum Institute, et al. never made it to trial. The case was neutered early on by 11 oil executives working closely with the White House to ensure an Allied victory in World War II. The executives — nine of whom were affiliated with defendant companies — asked the attorney general to strike from the complaint a provision that would have forced companies to divest assets such as pipelines. This, the men warned, could hamper the war effort and “becloud relationships between the government and industry.”
After languishing in the courts for years, the lawsuit was dismissed in 1951 by the Justice Department, which found it to be a logistical nightmare. Gone, too, was the government’s interest in dissolving API as a monopolistic tool of industry. This year, API wriggled out of public scrutiny once more. In yet another potentially landmark case, lawyers suing the U.S. government for inaction on climate change tried to compel the institute to turn over decades of internal records. API had joined the case to help defend the government but dropped out rather than reveal what it knew about global warming, and when.
“They're a highly sophisticated, integrated political operation,” said Bob Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. API’s effectiveness, Brulle said, lies in its partnerships with like-minded groups such as the American Chemistry Council, the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — amplifying its message “in a very directed, coordinated way.” In 2016, the institute absorbed its only real competitor, America’s Natural Gas Alliance.
With ample resources at their disposal, groups such as API — which employs a full-time legal staff and can also tap into the legal teams of its member companies — can quickly blunt federal regulatory efforts or simply wait for the political winds to change.
On November 30, 1999, for example, representatives of more than 20 lobby groups met at the institute’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to muster opposition to an EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Leading the meeting was API lobbyist Phil Cooney. In a memo, the institute offered to coordinate on the alliance’s behalf, pushing out the message to politicians and the news media. But by 2001, the political climate had changed. Cooney had become head of environmental policy for George W. Bush’s White House, where he altered federal reports to sow doubt on climate change. Under Bush, the EPA retreated from its earlier position, claiming it didn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases after all. Cooney could not be located for comment.
The issue came to a head in 2003 when 12 states sued the EPA to force its hand. Coming to the agency’s defense was the CO2 Litigation Group, a newly formed coalition of 14 trade associations — including API. The coalition represented a spectrum of fossil-fuel companies, which argued that the EPA had “oversimplified” and overstated the certainty of climate change’s effects.
The case, Massachusetts v. EPA, was decided in the states’ favor by the Supreme Court in 2007. But the matter continued to be tied up in the courts and the EPA bureaucracy, and it wasn’t until 2011 that the agency finally began regulating greenhouse gases. This gave rise to Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which targeted carbon dioxide emissions and became mired in litigation before the Trump administration marked it for extinction.
‘Irreparably harmed’
The back-and-forth of politics can be dispiriting. For that reason, James Hansen has staked his family's future — and the planet’s — on the courts. His granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, is one of 21 child and teenage plaintiffs inJuliana v. United States, a 2015 lawsuit that faults the government for failing to address climate change over half a century.
“What we want is a plan — just for the government to have a plan,” said Hansen, a former NASA scientist who now directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University and is acting as a scientific expert in the case. Last year, industry groups including API became parties to the case.
It was Hansen’s congressional testimony as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the sweltering summer of 1988 that elevated global warming from simmering concern to boiling reality. With “99-percent” certainty, Hansen explained that the trend was a side effect of fossil-fuel combustion that would worsen without swift action. Months later, a group that would come to include 170 scientists from 25 countries united to confront what it called “the greatest global environmental challenge facing mankind.”
When Hansen returned to Capitol Hill in 1989, he found his testimony heavily edited by the White House Office of Management and Budget under President George H.W. Bush. The office softened his conclusions, tacked on a paragraph qualifying his findings and otherwise stirred uncertainty about man-made causes of climate change.
While many have focused on what, and when, companies such as ExxonMobil knew about climate change, Julia Olson — a lawyer with Our Children’s Trust, a legal aid group representing the Juliana plaintiffs — is making a case for government complicity.
After years of litigating environmental cases, Olson realized she was dealing with symptoms of a disease, not the disease itself. “We were just playing a game of Whac-a-mole. One new part of our fossil fuel energy system would pop up, and we’d challenge it, and then it’d pop up somewhere else.”
She turned her attention to the government, which “chooses the winners and losers” and has long abetted fossil fuels, she said, allowing the industry to drill, mine and build. “Everyone wants Exxon to be the enemy,” Olson said, but, “every administration has made that decision to perpetuate fossil fuels.”
After digging through presidential archives, her researchers found what they believe is the earliest White House reference to climate change: a 1961 letter from Sen. Clinton Anderson of New Mexico toPresident John F. Kennedy, recounting a meeting a day earlier at which they discussed a Fortune article warning of sea-level rise from a warming climate.
Lyndon B. Johnson was the first president to publicly acknowledge such warming. In a speech in January 1965, he described how “a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels” was permanently altering the planet. By year’s end, his science advisory board had delivered a detailed report on the “invisible pollutant” capable of melting ice caps and raising sea levels.
Despite these early warnings, little has been done, Olson said. Since Hansen’s 1988 testimony, there have been more excessively hot years than at any other time on record. Two international accords tackling climate change have been brokered, with the United States conspicuously absent on both.
Though not named in Juliana, API , the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers quickly intervened in the lawsuit,asserting their right to protect their members’ economic interests. The move awkwardly put the fossil-fuel groups on the same side as the Obama administration.
Their involvement in Juliana was short-lived.In late February, plaintiffs filed a detailed 21-page discovery request for API alone, seeking decades of internal communications, policies and reports related to climate change. By late June, all three trade groups had exited a case they had voluntarily joined. A judge allowed them to drop out after they were unable to agree on the causes and effects of greenhouse gases. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., suspects the groups “fled to avoid having to make the disclosures.” A vocal supporter of the Juliana action, Whitehouse believes the courts will hold industry accountable. “You have a judge and you have sanctions for not telling the truth, and that is a combination that for decades the fossil fuel industry has sought to avoid like Kryptonite."
Other climate-related lawsuits have followed Juliana, which is set for trial in 2018. Last summer, three California coastal communities filed suit against 37 fossil-fuel companies, blaming their greenhouse-gas emissions for rising sea levels. In September, San Francisco and Oakland became the first major U.S. cities to sue oil companies to cover past and future flood damage. In November, a Pennsylvania lawsuit alleged that the Trump administration is using “junk science” to roll back climate policies. A lawsuit pitting Portuguese schoolchildren against 47 European nations for failing to act on climate is in the works.
‘Unwarranted and exaggerated’...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit-idCNL2N1IL13F
[NEW YORK, May 26 (Reuters) Two fossil fuel industry groups dropped their attempts to intervene in a court case over climate change this week after failing to reach an agreement on a unified legal position on climate science, court filings show.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[The American Petroleum Institute (API) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), prominent trade groups in the oil and gas industry, along with the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), intervened in a federal case in which a group of teenagers sued the U.S. government for violating their constitutional rights by causing climate change.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
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[The three groups were arguing that a judgment requiring the government to tighten environmental regulations would harm their business interests. But discord arose among them after a judge ordered them to submit a joint filing stating their views on climate science.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
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[A lawyer representing the three groups said in a court hearing on May 18 that they were unable to agree on the causes and effects of human activity and greenhouse gas emissions on the climate, transcripts of the proceedings show.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[“It seems pretty clear that the trade group intervenors have recognized that there may be costs as well as benefits to intervention and that they might be better off leaving the defense of the case to the government,” said Seth Jaffe, an environmental lawyer who is a partner at Foley Hoag in Boston. He is not involved in the case.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
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[NAM was the first to file its request to withdraw, submitting it to the court on Monday. API asked to withdraw on Thursday. AFPM has not yet responded to the judge’s request.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[“What is noticeably absent from these withdrawal motions is the reason why the fossil fuel industry wants to leave the case,” said Philip Gregory, a lawyer for the teen plaintiffs.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[One issue for the industry groups is that laying out in court the scientific findings they accept on climate change could bind them to specific positions in other legal proceedings.](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[Exxon Mobil, for instance, a member of both API and NAM, is battling with attorneys general in Massachusetts and New York who are investigating the company for fraud based on apparent discrepancies between its public stance on global warming and internal documents on climate science. >The API formed a “Climate Change Task Force” last year to form a new message on climate change. Fang, when asked by Reuters on May 19 if the force had made any changes to API’s public stance on climate change, said: “Nothing has changed.”](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
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[A spokeswoman for NAM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case is Juliana v. U.S., U.S. District Court, District of Oregon (Eugene), No. 15-cv-01517. (Reporting By Emily Flitter; Editing by Tom Hogue)](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/594cab304f14bc6f191a3495/1498196786087/Doc+173+Pls+Resp+to+API+Mot+to+Withdraw.pdf](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climatechange-lawsuit
Emily%20Flitter)
JULIA A. OLSON (OR Bar 062230)
JuliaAOlson@gmail.com
WILD EARTH ADVOCATES
1216 Lincoln Street
Eugene, OR 97401
Tel: (415) 786-4825
DANIEL M. GALPERN (OR Bar 061950)
dan.galpern@gmail.com
LAW OFFICES OF DANIEL M. GALPERN
2495 Hilyard Street, Suite A
Eugene, OR 97405
Tel: (541) 968-7164
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
JOSEPH W. COTCHETT
jcotchett@cpmlegal.com
PHILIP L. GREGORY (pro hac vice)
pgregory@cpmlegal.com
PAUL N. MCCLOSKEY
pmccloskey@cpmlegal.com
COTCHETT, PITRE & McCARTHY, LLP
San Francisco Airport Office Center
840 Malcolm Road
Burlingame, CA 94010
Tel: (650) 697-6000
Fax: (650) 697-0577
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF OREGON
KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA;
XIUHTEZCATL TONATIUH M., through
his Guardian Tamara Roske-Martinez; et al.
Plaintiffs,
v.
The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA;
DONALD TRUMP, in his official capacity as
President of the United States; et al.,
Federal Defendants.
Case No.: 6:15-cv-01517-TC
PLAINTIFFS’ RESPONSE TO
INTERVENOR DEFENDANT AMERICAN
PETROLEUM INSTITUTE’S MOTION TO
WITHDRAW
toc
Intervenor Defendant API’s Intervention...........................................................2
II. Intervenor Defendants’ involvement in this case has complicated and
prolonged the litigation to the detriment of this Court and Plaintiffs..............4
a. Intervenor Defendants’ motion to dismiss and motion to certify
order for interlocutory appeal required substantial
additional briefing by Plaintiffs................................................................5
b. Intervenor Defendants refused this Court’s multiple requests to
narrow the issues as to the allegations in the complaint
admitted by Federal Defendants..............................................................6
c. Intervenor Defendants’ refusal to respond to any discovery
placed a significant burden on Plaintiffs and this Court.....................12
ARGUMENT ...............................................................................................................................13
I. API seeks to avoid its obligations as a party in the case and must
provide a justification to the Court in support of its desire to withdraw.......13
II. Intervenor Defendants’ withdrawal should be conditioned in a
manner that does not prejudice Plaintiffs.........................................................14
a. API’s withdraw from the case should be with prejudice .....................18
b. This Court should condition API’s withdrawal upon API’s
dismissing of all its pending motions and objections............................24
c. In addition to allowing API’s withdrawal only with
prejudice and API’s dismissal of all its motions and objections,
this Court should place other terms and conditions on API’s
withdrawal from this case.......................................................................24
i. This Court has the inherent power to order an award of
attorneys’ fees to Plaintiffs, given Intervenor Defendants’
conduct in this case ......................................................................25