Tag Archives: Sher Edling boilerplate

Platkin v Exxon Mobil Corp.

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At his October 18 video news conference announcement of his same-day filing of Platkin v. ExxonMobil, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin implied the science of catastrophic climate events caused by the burning of fossil fuels was settled, and that his seemingly stand-alone bold lawsuit action to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for knowing their harm and disinforming the public for decades was timely and meaningful for New Jersey residents. And he thanked a lot of attorneys for their help in bringing this case, including one particular law firm, “our outside council Sher Edling.”

To set up the political suicide of this situation – how it is not timely at all, and how he really could have thanked just the one law firm there – I paraphrase a scene out of a famous movie:

I have to say that’s the most amazing story I’ve ever heard. What amazes me most is that he was taken in by it. It’s obvious this fellow Platkin was impressed by the Sher Edling law firm. He hears their tales of woe about climate and tries to cheer NJ residents up with this announcement. He’s young, not terribly bright. It’s not surprising he wouldn’t know what a state he puts his supporters in.

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Anne Arundel County v BP P.L.C. et al.

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When the day arrives where enviro-activist media writers attempt to dissuade the public from reading any of my analysis of the “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they descended to hurling superficial accusations such as saying my label of “Sher Edling boilerplate lawsuit filings” doesn’t fit the definition of “boilerplate.”

The Sher Edling’s law firm’s Maui v Sunoco filing is 139 pages long while their Annapolis v BP is 171 pages, which is so much of a huge length difference that these cannot be literal copies from one courthouse filing to the next. If Mr Cook is wrong on that claim right from the start, it stands to reason that none of his blog posts are worth reading.

Uh, huh. That would be a pure “nothing to see here, move along” Streisand Effect tactic, potentially prompting people to ask instead what it is, specifically, that I detail in these lawsuit filings. In my dissection of Annapolis v BP, my comparison of it to Maui v Sunoco detailed how both, along the prior thirteen Sher Edling boilerplate filings, contain largely the same blocks of text, and I illustrated specific faults with those blocks via a checklist of the repetitions and their ties to dicey sources, along with an additional note about a particular omission problem. I went so far as to speculate that the strange omission might be repeated in a future Arundel County lawsuit filing.

That omission is indeed repeated now in Arundel County v. BP. But on top of that, this latest boilerplate filing is actually as close to a literal copy ’n paste from one courthouse to the next as it could be. Continue reading →

City of Annapolis v. BP PLC, et al.

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Same old accusation — that energy companies willfully hid the ‘harm’ of their products from the public by colluding with skeptic climate scientist ‘shills’ in disinformation campaigns to undercut the “truth” about catastrophic man-caused global warming — different day. The mob of enviro-activists who place all their faith in this accusation never being questioned seem to be oblivious how the more often these Sher Edling law firm boilerplate filings are trumpeted as something new, exciting, and adding to a long list of “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits, the harder it will be to hide the fatal faults in them.

The only ‘new’ thing about this otherwise worn out state / county / city lawsuits traveling circus act is the amusing spin effort applied to the status of this latest Annapolis v. BP filing which previous ones didn’t get. Continue reading →

County of Maui v. Sunoco LP, et al.

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Just three weeks ago, enviro-activists applauded the October 12, 2020 filing of the Maui v. Sunoco lawsuit. No doubt the residents there would see the logic of sharing pretty much all of the lawsuit details with the neighboring Honolulu v. Sunoco one — same Table of Contents format, same Introduction wording, same accusatory section, etc. Makes sense, Maui and Honolulu are neighbors supposedly suffering the same catastrophic man-caused global warming harm. But wouldn’t the residents of Maui be a little disappointed to find out their lawsuit appears to be little more than a pure hand-me-down copy of Delaware v. BP which is also handled by the same law firm handling their case? After all, Delaware has nearly the same accusatory section, nearly the same Introduction wording, and nearly the same Table of Contents. Continue reading →

State of Delaware v. BP America Inc, et al.

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The Washington Free Beacon has an ongoing series of “I forced a bot to …” parodies making fun of predictable robot-like reactions from biased journalists or far-left activists to particular hot topics. Seriously, however, it might be worthy of genuine speculation as to whether the Sher Edling law firm has a bot writer program to punch out boilerplate-similar global warming lawsuits. I actually speculated about that back when I wrote my dissection of their second round of simultaneously-filed lawsuits, where I detailed the fatal fault of their lawsuits’ enslavement to the worthless “reposition global warming” memos. The repeats galore continue in their latest Delaware v. BP filing.

In this post, I’ll detail the major fault with a repeated item that I haven’t shown before, but first ……… Continue reading →

City of Charleston v. Brabham Oil Company, et al.

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In just the span of barely the first three weeks of September, four lawsuits suing energy companies for the costs of man-caused global warming were filed, City of Hoboken v. ExxonMobil, et al. (9/2/20), City of Charleston v Brabham Oil Company, et al. (9/9/20), Delaware v. BP America Inc, et al. (9/10/20), and Connecticut v. ExxonMobil Corp. (9/14/20). These allege the companies knew their products caused harm from global warming while orchestrating disinformation campaigns with ‘shill’ experts to deceive the public about the harm. Politico summarized these in a September 16 podcast report as part of a “new wave of climate change lawsuits” against fossil fuel companies “racking up nationwide.” While no comparison was offered in that report to the way the tobacco industry began to crumble under the weight of lawsuits against it in the 1990s, a same-day report from E&E News was not the least bit subtle about prompting readers to consider how this “growing body of climate misinformation suits” compares to the tobacco industry’s situation over its knowledge of the harm of cigarette smoking. No mention was made in either report, of course, regarding dubious claims about the allegedly ‘settled science’ of man-caused global warming. Continue reading →

City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP, et al.

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Politicians in Hawaii were threatening to sue Big Energy companies last November for damages from the effects of man-caused global warming. As seen in their press release last week, March 9th, they finally delivered on it. Poor timing for those City/County officials, since the Coronavirus news is overrunning all other news now, but far more important is their poor judgement and lack of due diligence regarding their politically suicidal decision to jump on the bandwagon of the nine other boilerplate global warming lawsuits, which are being handled by the Sher Edling law firm. Continue reading →

Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Inc. v. Chevron Corp., et al.

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News of this PCFFA lawsuit filing [10/12/20 Author’s addition: the PDF file name changed from “Crab-complaint” to “PCFFA-Complaint”, necessitating a new weblink] came up two weeks ago at Energy in Depth: “Latest Sher Edling Climate Lawsuit Further Exposes Anti-Energy Activist Network.” Others, such as Climate Liability News (CLN: “Commercial Fishermen Sue Fossil Fuel Industry for Climate Impacts“) covered it differently without mentioning any questionable items about the situation. What are the problems with this particular boilerplate lawsuit? Let me count the ways: Continue reading →

Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. BP P.L.C., et al.

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In my May 17, 2018 post on the King County v. BP lawsuit, I noted how I could have taken a shortcut to simply refer readers back to my earlier blog posts regarding identically worded lawsuits in different communities led by the same lawyer, Matt Pawa … but I instead offered additional troubling details about how he might be connected to dubious ‘evidence’ within that set of cases. Basically the same situation applies here with this latest City of Baltimore filing, regarding the eight global warming lawsuits under the Sher Edling law firm banner. My July 13, 2018 post on the Rhode Island variant noted the identical wording of them, and went into details of what I call “the fingerprints of Naomi Oreskes.” This Baltimore case suffers from the same affliction — it repeats the worthless set of supposedly Western Fuels “reposition global warming” memos on its PDF page 80 (printout’s pg 75), and Oreskes’ more than decade-old disingenuous portrayal of President Johnson’s speech is on its PDF page 56 (printout’s pg 51). But among my prior dissections of the Sher Edling cases, I haven’t mentioned anything about Vic Sher or Matt Edling. Continue reading →

State of Rhode Island v. Chevron, et al.

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This latest global warming lawsuit has two major problems. First, it’s essentially pure “boilerplate copy ’n paste” from six other current California global warming lawsuits being run by the same Sher Edling law firm. I already covered that problem – their enslavement to Ross Gelbspan’s worthless ‘leaked memos’ accusation about ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ – in my dissections of the Santa Cruz City/County / City of Richmond v. Chevron trio, and the San Mateo / Marin Counties / City of Imperial Beach v. Chevron trio. But I found another problem I’d overlooked in those filings. Call it “The Fingerprints of Naomi Oreskes,” a situation which only further opens a window into just how disingenuous the overall “evidence” is that’s used to indict skeptic climate scientists of industry-paid corruption. Continue reading →