john keenan hon
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CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com › 2018/07/19 › judge-tosses-nycs-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/judge-tosses-nycs-climate-change-lawsuit-against-5-big-oil-companies.html)
Jul 19, 2018 — A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit brought by New York City against Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other oil companies for their role ...
- A federal judge dismissed New York’s lawsuit against five big oil and gas companies for their role in climate change.
- New York argued the companies should compensate the city for the cost of mitigating the effects of global warming.
- U.S. District Court Judge John F. Keenan ruled that problems associated with climate change should be tackled by Congress and the executive branch.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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 Torreis 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
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John Fontaine Keenan (born November 23, 1929) is a senior United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Education and career
Born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, Keenan graduated from Regis High School in 1947. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Manhattan College in 1951. He received a Bachelor of Laws from Fordham University School of Law in 1954. He was in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956. He was in private practice of law in New York City in 1956. He was an assistant district attorney of New York County from 1956 to 1976. He was an assistant district attorney in charge of Supreme Court Bureau of New York County from 1968 to 1969. He was an assistant district attorney in charge of homicide bureau in New York County from 1970 to 1973. He was the chief assistant district attorney of Queens County in 1973. He was an administrative assistant district attorney in charge of trials in New York County in 1974. He was the chief assistant district attorney of New York County from 1974 to 1976. He was a deputy state attorney general/special prosecutor of corruption in New York City from 1976 to 1979. He was the Chairman and President of New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation from 1979 to 1982. He was the criminal justice coordinator of New York City from 1982 to 1983. He was a member of the Republican Party.[2][3][4]
Federal judicial service
Keenan was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on September 13, 1983, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 20, 1983, and received commission the same day. He assumed senior status on December 31, 1996. He served as a Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1994 to 2001. He was a member of the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation from 1998 to 2006.[3][5][4]
Notable cases
His rulings include authorizing the publication of Jeffrey Toobin's Opening Arguments, an account of the Iran–Contra affair, over the objections and threat of prosecution by Lawrence E. Walsh;[6] managing the delivery of medical relief funds to India following the Union Carbide Corporation gas plant disaster in Bhopal[7] and dismissing attempts to sue Union Carbide in U.S. courts rather than in India;[8] denying a gay Irish group the right to hold its own march on the same day as the city's St. Patrick's Day parade in 1995, determining that the city's claims that it would pose a safety hazard trumped the group's First Amendment claims.[9] He presided at the trial of Bess Myerson, New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner, on corruption charges in 1988[10] and that of Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos on racketeering charges in 1990.[11]
Reversed cases
On August 16, 2010, Keenan sentenced Mahmoud Reza Banki to 30 months in prison.[12] This sentence was overturned on October 24, 2011, at which time the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Banki reversing the sanctions charges against him.[13] Appellate court ruled that Judge John F. Keenan had erred at trial; in denying Banki's defense request to instruct the jury on the law that specifically exempts family money as an exception to the sanctions law, permitting such transfers without the need for a license. The final appellate court brief stated: "Banki's conviction [on the sanctions charges] cannot stand".[14]
See also
John F. Keenan, New York City's Coordinator of Criminal Justice, is a registered Republican, but his long public service career has been largely the result of appointments by Democrats.
That changed yesterday when the White House announced that President Reagan would nominate his fellow Republican, Mr. Keenan, for a lifetime Federal District Court judgeship in New York's Southern District, based in Manhattan.
Mr. Keenan, a 53-year-old resident of the Bronx with a long history of criminal-justice service, had been recommended to the President by Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, Republican of New York. The nomination requires Senate confirmation.
The Republican sponsorship in Washington was coupled with high praise for Mr. Keenan from present and former prosecutors, mostly Democrats, in New York.
''Probably the finest appointment from a criminal-law standpoint,'' said District Attorney Mario Merola of the Bronx. 'An Extraordinary Lawyer'
''An outstanding trial lawyer, a super guy,'' said District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan. ''Very calm and one of the few first-rate trial lawyers without a huge ego.''
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''An extraordinary lawyer, very, very fair, compassionate and understanding,'' said another member of the fraternity of past and present prosecutors, Charles J. Hynes, who was most recently the city's Fire Commissioner but is now in private law practice.
Richard Emery, staff counsel of the New York Civil Liberties Union, had another view. He said Mr. Keenan had been ''open and available,'' but had promoted Mayor Koch's criminal-justice program, which ''includes major erosions in what we consider basic constitutional rights.''
Thomas A. Bolan, chairman of Senator D'Amato's judicial screening committee, which interviewed Mr. Keenan more than a year ago and unanimously recommended him to the Senator, noted that Mr. Keenan's background was more as a prosecutor than a politician. He said that ''practically all the members of the committee are ex-prosecutors.''
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One influential member of the committee, Michael F. Armstrong, the former Knapp Commission counsel and former Queens District Attorney, is a friend of Mr. Keenan and one of his rare former bosses who is a Republican. Born in Manhattan
John Fontaine Keenan - his middle name was his mother's maiden name -was born in Manhattan on Nov. 23, 1929. He graduated from Regis High School in Manhattan and from Manhattan College.
Mr. Keenan began his career in public service with Frank S. Hogan, the Manhattan District Attorney, in December 1956 after graduating from Fordham Law School in 1954 and serving two years in the Army. By 1973, Mr. Keenan was chief of the District Attorney's Homicide Bureau.
Mr. Keenan recalls that Mr. Hogan, a Democrat who was one of the nation's pre-eminent district attorneys, was considering retirement in 1973, and after his chief assistant, Alfred Scotti, was rejected by political leaders as a potential successor, he turned to Mr. Keenan.
There was one problem, Mr. Keenan said he told Mr. Hogan. ''I'm not sure you know I'm a Republican.'' Mr. Hogan did not, but he nevertheless made what proved to be a futile call to Democratic leaders to determine if they would support Mr. Keenan. They would not, so Mr. Hogan decided to seek another term. A Blossoming Reputation
In the next three years, Mr. Keenan's reputation as a prosecutor blossomed as he successively became the chief assistant to three district attorneys, Mr. Armstrong in Queens and Richard H. Kuh and Mr. Morgenthau, both in Manhattan.
In June 1976, a Democrat, Gov. Hugh L. Carey and a Republican, Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz, jointly appointed him as the state's special prosecutor for corruption in the midst of the controversy over Mr. Carey's dismissal of Maurice H. Nadjari as the special prosecutor.
In 1979, Mr. Keenan was appointed by Mayor Koch as chairman of the city's Offtrack Betting Corporation. Last year Mr. Koch again turned to Mr. Keenan and appointed him as his Coordinator of Criminal Justice, in effect the Mayor's chief adviser and trouble-shooter on the criminal-justice system.
He was interviewed yesterday between meetings of the OTB, of which he is still a board member, and a budget session with Mr. Morgenthau. Applied to Screening Panel
Mr. Keenan said he had applied to the D'Amato screening panel for consideration for a judgeship, was interviewed by the group 15 months ago, met with the Senator over dinner in Washington about a year ago and has since met socially with Mr. D'Amato several times, including at two Jets football games. They had not known each other before.
Mr. Keenan had also been a possible D'Amato recommendation for the position of United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, but the job went to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had been an associate attorney general in Washington.
Mr. Keenan said President Reagan had telephoned him directly Tuesday to inform him of the nomination. If confirmed, he would succeed Judge Lloyd F. MacMahon, who has retired. Mr. Keenan would be Senator D'Amato's seventh Federal judge appointee in only two and a half years in office.
Mr. Keenan's wife, Diane, is a parochial school teacher in Inwood, Queens, and the couple have an 18-year-old daughter, Marie. Yesterday Mr. Keenan acknowledged that his political connections were slim. ''I've never run for public office nor belonged to a political club,'' he said.
He said that if he were confirmed, ''I'll try to be a thoughtful, careful and fair judge.'' Meanwhile, he was being careful about his views on issues. ''Until I'm confirmed,'' he said, ''I'm not going to shoot my mouth off.''
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