This one, filed on November 25, 2025, should be quite easy to dissect, like I do with any other Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuit; compare their latest to one of the prior filings, with a checklist run-through of the key accusation narratives which repeat like clockwork from one filing to the next.
But we have a problem here, maybe a particularly huge one. While the key accusation narratives do indeed repeat like clockwork … this is not a Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuit. It’s a Hagens-Berman filing. They’re based in Seattle. But watch what happens when you compare this filing to the San Francisco Sher Edling law firm’s filing they did for the state of Hawaii in May 2025, plus one of their others filed in late 2023. I’ll start with Sher Edling’s trademark four accusation elements first, color coding my screencaptures below from each filing to show the shared words.
✓ Ye olde accusation about the (never implemented!) “reposition global warming” memos set — PDF file pages 62-63, print page 58-59, paragraph 270. Compare this filing’s words in that paragraph to Sher Edling’s Hawaii v BP version. Identical. Not similar; identical. Word-for-word. Even the footnotes in both for the accusation are identical, down to the use of the “Perma” site url address, with the solitary difference being Hawaii includes the date the citation was accessed; Kennedy does not.
✓ the “Chicken Little” / “Doomsday” / “Most Serious Problem” ‘advertorials’ trio — in the paragraph immediately following the above “reposition global warming” memo phrase. Compare this trio’s horribly degraded photocopies’ appearances and the text wording about them to Hawaii. Not similar … identical, except Hawaii has an additional label under the photocopies. Slightly different worded footnotes. The people at the Hagens-Berman law firm went with the same cropped “Most Serious” ad presentation that Sher Edling did – not helping matters for each law firm one bit. Neither firm can ever produce an actual newspaper edition where the “Chicken Little” / Doomsday Canceled” advertorials appeared, because neither were published anywhere. But if both firms’ attorneys are hit with the request to produce the “Most Serious” advertorial, each will have to explain why the bottom text was chopped out, and if there is any actual ‘disinformation’ in that text.
✓ Ye olde (never implemented!) “victory will be achieved memos — PDF file page 67, paragraph 286. Here, while the basic (and false) accusation is made, Kennedy‘s version (* in this specific instance) is worded quite differently than Hawaii‘s version, including its footnote citation. That right there would be a case study* on how the same narrative can be made, while avoiding any appearance of plagiarism. What also separates Kennedy from Hawaii in this particular instance* is that Sher Edling’s boilerplate copy filings always seemingly sought to bury – via the citation source links going to an innocuous-looking “DocumentCloud” file – how the source for the accusation was Kert Davies (that Kert Davies) when he worked at Greenpeace. The attorneys at Hagens-Berman aren’t shy in the least about citing Kert Davies here – they simply hide his Greenpeace connection and cite his Climate Files version instead. Both his Greenpeace file upload and his Climate Files upload are identical. Not similar; identical. And again, the “victory” memos were never implemented.
( * hold that thought for a few moments about the three asterisks bits above. This will come up again, the Hagens-Berman people apparently weren’t that smart about their other mention of the “victory memos.”)
✓ “Bankroll” scientists” (a.k.a., the Willie Soon accusation among the core Sher Edling accusation elements) — PDF file page 52, paragraph 235. Sher Edling was pretty much consistent in the way they worded their accusation against Dr Soon, never mentioning any other scientist in connection with the “bankroll” word, up until their November 2024 Maine v BP boilerplate copy filing. My dissection of that one showed how Sher Edling strangely split their accusation against Dr Soon in half, and for the first time inserted an accusation against Dr S Fred Singer. Except it was not the first time this specific “Dr Singer” accusation angle was seen in an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit; Sher Edling appeared to plagiarize it straight out of the 2017 Hagens-Berman-Pawa 2017 San Francisco v BP lawsuit. Sher Edling’s May 2025 Hawaii filing continued that new trend. Now, compare Kennedy on this accusation element to Hawaii. Minus Kennedy‘s clumsy initial few words and a few other inconsequential bits . . . . the comparison is not just similar – it is identical.
The next checklist item is outside of what I term “the Sher Edling four central accusation elements,” but nevertheless routinely appears within the middle of Sher Edling’s standard accusation narrative about the “reposition global warming” memos / newspaper advertorials:
✓ The “Richard Lawson memo — PDF file pages 63, paragraph 271. Observe: Kennedy – – – Hawaii – identical. Made worse by how the footnote citation for it is Naomi Oreskes, who is on retainer with Sher Edling – presumably as an ‘expert’ on ‘industry disinfo campaigns.’
Let’s look at one more instance within Kennedy here, concerning an item I brought up in my Part 1 dissection of the (supposedly-totally-unrelated-to-Sher-Edling) Milberg Coleman law firm’s Puerto Rico v Exxon filing:
✓ The “Joseph Carlson memo” — PDF file page 41, paragraph 199. Observe: Kennedy – – – Hawaii – identical. Apart from Kennedy doing a pointless three-word swap, and showing part of the text as an illustration rather than simple text.
WAIT ….. where have I previously seen ‘text as an illustration’ within an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit? Not in Sher Edling’s Hawaii. Oh, yeah, it was the surprising-to-me-at-the-time appearance of that odd tactic in Sher Edling’s December 2023 Makah Indian Tribe v Exxon filing, and in their twin filing for another Washington state tribe. So, what happens when a comparison is made of Kennedy and one of those tribe filings? Watch this:
Kennedy‘s (PDF file page 42) text-as-dramatic-illustration featuring their other initial reference to the “reposition global warming” memos – – – compared to Makah‘s (PDF file page 42) singular text-as-dramatic-illustration. Two supposedly unassociated law firm names there, identical paragraphs and illustrations and footnote citation sources. Interesting how the sentence before this section in Kennedy is the same as the one in Makah, isn’t it?
Keep going – two pages later in both filings, the Kennedy filing’s other initial reference to the “victory” memos, where the memo scan is seen as an illustration ……. is identical to Makah’s. Not similar; identical.
Several pages after that after some non-matching text … the same problem erupts.
Way too much shared content to be a pure coincidence. But as I pointed out in my April 2025 blog post concerning what appears to be widespread plagiarism involving supposedly unrelated law firms and law offices, this all does not really look like attorneys in one office copying some other law office’s “homework.”
Funny how the [currently innocuously-labeled] Inside Climate News organization (which first glorified Matt Pawa and his Kivalina v Exxon back when they were more accurately political agenda-labeled “Solve Climate News”) has described this Kennedy v Exxon case as “the first to target fossil fuel companies over these skyrocketing insurance costs.” There’s nothing “first” about this lawsuit at all, it has every appearance of being yet another rehash of the same John Passacantando, Kert Davies, et al. [dba Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action / Our Next Economy / CIC ] v. Exxon & any other applicable energy companies that’s been put out since 2017. If the ICN reporter writing that piece was the least bit unbiased (she is not) she would have minimally reported what the seemingly obvious fatal plagiarism problem is with this lawsuit – after a deep examination is undertaken, of course. Give the Hagens-Berman firm points for opening up the plaintiffs field beyond just cities / counties / states.
But many questions need to be asked here, beyond my limited ability to ask about them: The Hagens-Berman law firm has not filed an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit since 2018, which was back when Matt Pawa, “the legal brains” behind the climate litigation lawfare efforts, worked for them. Pawa says at his current law firm website that he worked at other firms – without naming who they were. Hagens-Berman’s website pretends like he never existed, and their Kennedy v Exxon filing has zero mention of any involvement with Sher Edling … nor does their entire website. Same in reverse for the Sher Edling site regarding Pawa. or Hagens-Berman. Back in 2018, Vic Sher himself specifically said he wasn’t talking with Hagens-Berman-Pawa about Matt Pawa’s twin San Francisco / Oakland lawsuits. But at Sher Edling’s current website, they say those two lawsuits are under their control. Matt Pawa doesn’t say a thing about those other firms, either. A late 2018 article at The Daily Caller described how Pawa and Sher Edling were not getting along at all, and how the cities of San Francisco / Oakland had fired Hagens-Berman and hired Sher Edling.
In messy ‘divorces’ like that, the warring sides usually never do a thing with each other ever again.
So . . . . how does it work that Hagens-Berman-Pawa material from 2017 is in Sher Edling lawsuits, and how does it work that Sher Edling material is in the brand-new Hagens-Berman lawsuit?
Who is plagiarizing who, now?
If the whole situation of ‘shared text’ wasn’t already smelling bad from being overripe for Federal investigation, this new Kennedy v Exxon lawsuit makes it stink all the worse.