Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey was probably crossing his fingers that during his office’s likely weeks- if not months-long preparation of this filing before the November 5th general election, that the joint Senate/House investigation into the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling would become toothless as the result of the U.S. Senate remaining Democrat majority-run and the U.S. House switching to Democrat majority. AG Frey was probably also counting on a VP Harris winning the White House, swept in with her lightly questioned claim about suing Exxon but still having the zeal to do so someday. No such luck. Instead, with this newest Nov 26, 2024 “ExxonKnew” lawsuit being yet another outright Sher Edling boilerplate copy filing, AG Frey provided even more fodder for Senator Cruz and Rep Comer to investigate. The Maine AG office’s press release only had a download-to-read PDF file of this lawsuit at the bottom instead of a regular internet link, so I downloaded it and created a direct-read link to it here.
I”ll first go through the main items in my checklist ‘certifying’ this one as a boilerplate copy … but then I’ll show its new utterly unwise copy ‘n paste bit out of another supposedly ‘unconnected’ seven year-old+ “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. This newest apparent plagiarism maneuver on their part is an open invitation for Senator Cruz / Rep Comer to dig into how these lawsuits are assembled and who it is doing the actual assembling.
Keep in mind here, these lawsuits are built on two false notions: Sher Edling accuses Exxon, BP, et al. of knowing the science of man-caused global warming was settled as far back as the 1960s (it was not, in the face of all the global cooling reports back then), and they blanket-accuse the defendants of cynically declaring — I composite into a single sentence — “Victory will be achieved when we pay Dr Wei-Hock Soon $1.2 million to reposition global warming as theory (not fact) via deceptive newspaper advertorials.” To back that up, Sher Edling’s filings have multi-time repeated several ancillary items. Let’s start with those lesser ones first:
✓ The “Richard Lawson memo,” sourced from Naomi Oreskes, but with no internet link. Sher Edling simply hopes a judge and jury will trust what’s in Oreskes’ obscure 2010 book chapter contribution. Therein lies one of myriad fatal problems within the Sher Edling lawsuits. That’s the chapter where she falsely claimed the “reposition global warming” memos were archived in a place they were not, and where she claimed she was inexplicably alerted to them by a former associate of Al Gore. She’s not a benefit from being on retainer with them, she is an outright detriment. I first detailed the fault of citing the Lawson memo in my Sept 2020 dissection of Hoboken v. Exxon, which was filed by a law firm with supposedly no connection to Sher Edling. They used basically the identical wording, inadvertently pointing to a behind-the-scenes connection appearance which the law firms may not want the public to know about.
✓ The Joseph Carlson memo, with its source slightly hidden* one increment deeper behind a web link system which Sher Edling has not used in their prior filings. However, when viewers click on the “View the live page” link, the memo is revealed as sourcing from the innocuous-looking “DocumentCloud” site which only worsens the ‘behind-the-scenes law offices connection’ problem. In my dissection of another supposedly unrelated law firm’s filing of Puerto Rico v Exxon, I showed how they skipped the ‘hidden final source’ problem and linked instead straight to Roland C “Kert” Davies and his Climate Files website. Kert Davies, similar to Oreskes, is also a detriment to Sher Edling, as I’ve detailed in my many prior lawsuit dissections.
*Sher Edling’s Maine filing’s use of the “perma.cc” citation source links, by the way, is a brand new little variant. This filing has sent pretty much all of the internet links they previously had under the new umbrella of the “Perma” site which creates links with supposedly never go non-functional. I’ve seen it used only one time before elsewhere.
✓ The 1977 “James Black Exxon Report.” In this Maine v BP, similar to Sher Edling’s first three filings (albeit with the new “perma.cc” link), they at least skip the innocuous “DocumentCloud” middleman and go faster to Kert Davies’ Climate Files site. But as I showed in my Sept 2020 dissection of Sher Edling’s Charleston v Brabham Oil, they inexplicably did not do that in their “Exhibit A Black Report” in their first trio of filings; the report instead linked to a memo set at the Inside Climate News website. What other lawsuit filing chose that alternate citation source? The 2017 “State of California” lawsuit – or more specifically – City/County of San Francisco v BP. filed by Matt Pawa. It is – with just slight url differences – the same web link source. Hold that thought for a few moments.
See the repetition pattern, though? Same Sher Edling boilerplate copy situation going on. Now, for further emphasis, the main attraction:
✓ The “Chicken Little” / “Doomsday” / “Most Serious Problem” ‘advertorials’ trio. The first two were never published anywhere, while Sher Edling oddly crops off the ad text of the last one … perhaps because there ‘s no real disinformation in the ad text (zoom in here). All three horrible photocopy images source from what I term “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action,” Kert Davies’ two long ago workplaces. Sher Edling credits him as the source of the “Chicken Little” advertorial.
✓ The “victory will be achieved” memos. This memo set was never implemented anywhere, but in these boilerplate copy filings (and buried one layer deeper behind the “perm” link variant), all are plagued by the source being Kert Davies, when he worked at Greenpeace.
✓ The “reposition global warming” memos. Worthless to prove any industry disinformation campaign ever happened because it was a rejected proposal to a public relations campaign and its directives and suggestions were never implemented anywhere.
Last but not least, ✓ “Bankroll scientists” – a.k.a. the false accusation about former Harvard Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon being bribed by Exxon. Back in early 2015, I detailed how this accusation erupted under Kert Davies’ odd re-emergence into the climate issue after he’d strangely quit of Greenpeace.
The new apparent oddball plagiarism bit in this Maine v BP filing was inserted into what had previously been a continuous string of Sher Edling filings where the particular paragraph only concerned Dr Soon – e.g. in their very first 2017 filing and in their just-prior July 2024 one. Observe what is new here, however:
They’ve rearranged their prior longtime “bankroll scientists” line (which I called out in my dissection of Delaware v BP) from prior filings, moving what previously had been a continuous accusation against Dr Soon farther down onto the next page, and are now aiming the “bankroll” accusation more at Dr Singer. That’s really suspicious. Sher Edling’s boilerplate copy filings only mentioned Dr Singer a single time before (I checked through them all), in Platkin v Exxon, and only then as an afterthought in a footnote. This newest one has five main text hits against him with two additional footnote references to him, one of which is a really dicey “SourceWatch” link.
But there’s more: I recognized that added ‘bankroll‘ part of Maine’s accusation against Dr Singer; it’s an almost direct copy ‘n paste out of Matt Pawa’s 2017 CA, County of San Francisco v BP filing:
It including the citation source of the utterly dubious “SourceWatch” ‘wiki’ page about Dr Singer. How bad is it? In my dissection of Matt Pawa’s 2018 (now self-dismissed) King County v. BP, I spent five paragraphs in my item #2, “The SourceWatch citation giant arrow red flag” section describing its fatal faults. It was not a boon to Matt Pawa, it was an outright detriment, begging for deeper investigation as to why he felt compelled to use it.
Now, that SourceWatch citation is a huge detriment to Sher Edling, pointing yet another giant arrow at whatever is going on behind the scenes in these climate lawfare litigation war.
Sher Edling took over Matt Pawa’s 2017 San Francisco / Oakland twin filings, they say as much at their own website. California Attorney General Rob Bonta undertook a “coordination” maneuver with Sher Edling’s first 6 filings and his own CA v Exxon 2023 via a legal motion on February 5 2024. That might explain – sorta – why Sher Edling’s subsequent February 20 2024 Chicago v BP looks like it plagiarized straight out of AG Bonta’s Sept 2023 CA v Exxon. Sher Edling was already coordinating with Bonta’s office on their Chicago filing …. or something.
Emphasis on “or something.”As I detailed in my 2023 dissection of AG Bonta’s CA v Exxon, his office apparently plagiarized its meritless accusation against Dr Soon basically out of the October 2022, Sher Edling-led Platkin v Exxon filing — with one very odd exception: Bonta’s lawsuit didn’t use Sher Edling’s multiyear-repeated press release source / archive link variant for the accusation, a different source was substituted. But in Sher Edling’s next-in-line boilerplate copy February 2024 filing, Chicago v BP – as I showed one paragraph above – their accusation against Dr Soon was literally word-for-word identical to AG Bonta’s . . . right down to Bonta’s oddly switched citation source.
And now we have this whole pile of apparent plagiarism over on the far east end of the country, which only deepens questions about the larger interconnections between the other law firms and Sher Edling. In this Maine v BP, the #2 law firm involved is DiCello Levitt, but that firm was the #1 in Chicago v BP. DiCello Levitt’s Bucks County v BP was basically a direct copy of Chicago, and they didn’t mention a word about partnering with Sher Edling. In Maine v BP, the #3 firm is Hausfeld LLP, the same firm that Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel chose as her assistant firm along with Sher Edling and DiCello Levitt in whatever future lawsuit she’s planning. That can’t be a coincidence. It likely isn’t — Maine v BP features Matt Pawa’s 2017 San Francisco v BP lawsuit accusation against Dr Singer. Pawa’s lawsuit featured the same accusation Dr Soon – right down to the same citation source – as seen in this newest Sher Edling boilerplate copy filing.
Who did Matt Pawa – the “legal brains” behind these lawsuits – previously work for? In her 2010 Inside Climate News article about Pawa, Amy Westervelt (yes, that Westervelt) provided the answer: Pawa worked for Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll. It’s the same Hausfeld who later split to create the current law firm.
Really small climate lawfare litigation world, isn’t it? Contrary to what the New York Times claims, there is really nothing new at all in this latest lawsuit, its seven year-old accusation material should have been an indicator to the reporter how this litigation effort instead appears to the same template used over and over with tweaks here and there, and the people behind it all are just one big happy tiny little family, which is probably now hoping against hope that they don’t get run over by an oncoming Cruz-Comer-Trump train.