Category Archives: Global warming lawsuits

The Political Suicide of Pushing “Reckless Climate Endangerment”

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It’s a 100% certain bet that none of the folks at the Public Citizen ‘consumer advocacy organization’ read my GelbspanFiles blog about the 100% certain inevitable crash of their prior ‘prosecute for Clima-Homicide™’ proposal (my post got even wider worldwide viewing as a guest post at WUWT, complete with a handy ‘you people that stupid?’ meme image at the top). Otherwise, they would not have come up with this announcement on October 15, (er … hold that thought until the very end of this post) October 17, 2024 regarding their latest proposal idea to prosecutors:

“We’re building the case for criminal prosecution of Big Oil brick by brick. Here is the first “prosecution memo” that lays out the case for filing, and winning, criminal charges for “reckless endangerment.” The law is clear. Barriers are only political.”

What the law is actually fundamentally clear about is that when presenting a case to a judge, the evidence you present must actually support your accusation. If it does not . . . the case is dismissed. If you’ve got no alternative evidence, that’s the end of the line on your effort.  Period.  What these people at the Public Citizen group are either oblivious to – or actually know but hope nobody notices – is that their ‘evidence’ for the claim that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns in collusion with skeptic scientist ‘shills’ is literally worthless. Public Citizen is not building a case ‘brick-by-brick,’ either, they appear to be doing nothing more than copying line-by-line from what already serves as ‘cornerstone evidence’ in one form or another about ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns’ in basically all of the currently filed “ExxonKnew” U.S. lawsuits, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico and points in between. I’m not exaggerating. What Public Citizen is doing is committing political suicide by again emphasizing the fatal fault plaguing the collective effort to accuse Big Oil of running disinformation campaigns to deceive the public. Continue reading →

Multnomah v. Exxon, version 2.0: Oregon County Suing Exxon Now Suing Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project

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On Oct 4, Multnomah County amended their filing to add a gas utility company as a defendant, along with Art Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM); more specifically, as I will detail below, his Oregon Petition Project. My response: Oh, brother. Redux. I already dissected the spectacular blunders surrounding the 2023 Multnomah v Exxon lawsuit; that bizarre filing effort looks like little more than a cloddish plagiarized copy of Puerto Rico v Exxon, which itself was so maladroitly cobbled together that I needed to do a two-part dissection of that one, plus I had to place an additional detail three months back at the end of part 2. I didn’t cover Puerto Rico‘s sections mentioning Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project because my two dissection posts were long enough already. I’ll admit error on failing to mention it now, it involves one more problem potentially tying their ineptness to that of the supposedly unassociated San Francisco Sher Edling law firm and their boilerplate-copy lawsuit filings. Since somebody within the Oregon law firms seems particularly bent on pointing an arrow the size of Texas at their inexplicable apparent plagiarism blunder … well, let’s now examine that angle and where it blows up in their faces, in four distinct ways. The full amended complaint is here.      Continue reading →

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico v. Exxon

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A.k.a. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Exxon. Bad enough that a johnny-come-lately law firm with no prior climate damages lawsuit issue experience blindly jumped onto the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits bandwagon in late 2022 representing multiple municipalities of Puerto Rico. It was one of the more ineptly done filings I’ve seen in this lawfare litigation effort, as I showed in my two-part dissection of that lawsuit. Bad enough that a literally redundant lawsuit was filed even more ineptly just over a year later solely for the Puerto Rico city of San Juan. Ineptly – because it was almost a literal copy ‘n paste of the first lawsuit by another law firm which had no climate issue experience whatsoever, as I showed in my dissection of that one. Redundant – because San Juan was already covered in the first lawsuit.

Now we have ‘redundant redux,’ in the form of no less than the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling attempting to get in on the act with this Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico July 15th, 2024 filing. Continue reading →

The Political Suicide of Pushing “Climate Homicide” … & muscling in on someone else’s “ExxonKnew” lawsuits territory?

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On June 26th just a little over a week ago, David “climate homicide” Arkush and co-authors at his Public Citizen group put out a press release titled “New Memo Details Legal Case for Prosecuting Big Oil for Extreme Heat Deaths,” containing a link to a 51 page proposal for prosecutors in the state of Arizona (Democrat ones, of course including the state’s Attorney General), noting:

Though this memo asks a particular question — how officials in Maricopa County could pursue reckless manslaughter or second degree murder prosecutions for deaths caused by the July 2023 heat wave — its analysis is relevant in most jurisdictions where prosecutors might seek justice for climate victims.

I already had a tag category at GelbspanFiles dating back over a year concerning Arkush’s ludicrous ultra-lawfare fixation. He’s now taken that fixation likely beyond its breaking point. It’s one thing to push the bizarre “charge fossil fuel companies with climate homicide” idea in ‘scholarly papers,’ but it’s quite another to propose the idea straight to state prosecutors. That’s what he’s presenting in the above press release. Forgive the rather morbid visual analogy here – the man virtually points a loaded revolver at his head and the heads of his co-authors and practically asks law firms defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits to pull the triggers for him.

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[Update 10/10/24] Michigan Attorney General Solicits Bids from Law Firms to Help File an “ExxonKnew” Lawsuit

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[ Author’s update 10/10/24: Per the day-earlier news from Nick Pope at The Daily Caller, AG Nessel’s “… office reached agreements in late September with three law firms to assist, including, including a San Francisco-based firm called Sher Edling, two  documents reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation show. … The other two firms named in the agreements are DiCello Levitt and Hausfeld …” As suggested in my original blog post entry below, and now confirmed, AG Nessel has chosen …poorly, particularly in light of the days-old report out of the joint U.S. Senate / House investigation concerning the dark money funding situation surrounding Sher Edling’s climate litigation lawfare efforts. ]

Why bother doing that? Why not take the easier route and plagiarize material straight out of other “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits? Other attorneys and law firms are already doing exactly that. Continue reading →

City of Chicago v. BP PLC

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Nice of the 2/20/24 Chicago Sun-Times “Chicago sues five giant oil companies” article to inadvertently point directly to what the potentially lawsuit-killing combined problem is with this latest “ExxonKnew” lawfare effort: the apparent need to bring in the California law firm Sher Edling for assistance, and the collective idea that fossil fuel companies knew of the harm of “climate change” fifty years ago but hid that from the public. Same story at the Chicago Tribune. The same Tribune which reported fifty years ago (2024-50=1974) that the changes in the climate caused by the burning of fossil fuels was global cooling.

A climate changing to a cooler one in 1974. A climate changing to a hotter one in 2024. You can’t have it both ways. So much for elemental fact-checking / investigative journalism in 2024. And of course, neither newspaper could be bothered to check the veracity of accusations presented in this – yes it is – latest boilerplate copy filing straight out of Sher Edling’s San Francisco offices. How do I know it’s another boilerplate copy where Chicago’s own city lawyers very likely had little or no input to offer? Let’s dive into Chicago v BP PLC et al.: (my own PDF download file here, if that link ceases to function) Continue reading →

Municipality of San Juan v. Exxon Mobil Corp.

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Basically all of the other “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits needed long dissections on my part — one needing a 2-part blog post to ultimately point out obvious faults with people who promote this law fare — to detail what fell apart within their accusations about what’s implied to be ‘liars-for-hire employed to carry out disinformation campaigns created by fossil fuel companies.’ When I say this ‘technically’ johnny-come-lately San Juan v Exxon lawsuit, filed on December 13, 2023, is easy for me to dissect, I’m not kidding. In fact, in the sheer simplicity of taking apart San Juan v Exxon only underscores the massive problem with the other lawsuit that needed two blog posts to reveal all its faults. So, the question needing to be answered about San Juan is: why it was filed at all? Continue reading →

Makah Indian Tribe v. Exxon / Shoalwater Indian Tribe v. Exxon

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No rest for the weary. Back on December 21st, I thought the little-publicized news of the fisherman’s trade association plaintiffs’ self-withdrawal of their PCFFA v Chevron global warming lawsuit was a Christmas gift to the skeptic side of the climate issue. Maybe the plaintiffs fully comprehended the futility of their lawsuit while also finding out how their choice of lawsuit handlers, the San Francisco Sher Edling law firm, was perhaps not qualified to handle the case. However, the situation is instead one step forward and two steps back when, it comes to being done with this climate lawfare litigation war. It turns out Sher Edling had filed a pair of brand-new lawsuits on Dec 20 for two Native American communities in Washington state, Makah Tribe v. Exxon and Shoalwater Tribe v. Exxon.

The news of this latest pair of filings was also oddly little-publicized in minor news outlets, compared to widespread news of the prior-most-recent one, the ‘watershed moment’ California v Exxon sensation ( ahem – keep an eye on the apparent grand unifying theme). But these two lawsuits might be also be considered a ‘Christmas gift’ that’ll keep on giving, not only to the defendants’ law firms, but also to objective journalists and potentially GOP House investigators. Continue reading →

People of the State of California v. Exxon Mobil Corporation

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Throw another one onto the “growing number” (growing number!) of “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits which insinuate that ‘Big Oil’ knew the burning of fossil fuels harmed the environment but deceived the public by employing ‘shill’ climate scientists in ‘disinformation campaigns’ to say there was no harm. This latest Sept 15, 2023 filing appears to be no different than the 31 other “Exxon Knew” lawsuits I’ve dissected where it fits a pattern of repeating (plagiarizing?) material out of the others, from dubious ‘science certainty’ assertions to corruption accusations worded carelessly enough that they potentially stray into reckless disregard territory. I’ll get into how this latest one fits that pattern, but first, let me illustrate how the ‘news reports’ about it reinforce the problem that we no longer have an objective news reporting media, we have a propaganda media telling the public – working at the most basic of intellectually dishonest levels – about these lawsuits. Continue reading →

City of Boulder, Boulder County and San Miguel County v. Suncor Energy, ExxonMobil — the Sher Edling connection

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Whenever I tell reporters, politicians/staffers and others about the way the “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits’ accusations are enslaved to one or the other or both of ye olde notorious ‘leaked industry documents’ known as the “reposition global warming” memos and the “victory will be achieved” memos for the claim that ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns’ existed, I always use the factually correct detail to say “nearly all” of the 28 lawsuits I list suffer from that fatal enslavement. The implication is that those with that enslavement could be thrown out, since the directives and objectives of each memo set were never carried out by any fossil fuel industry entity. In my April 26, 2018 dissection of Boulder v Suncor I felt a little uncomfortable with it being more of a ‘stretch of association’ in my list of 28, I admit, because the filing doesn’t refer at all to either memo set. King County v. BP also didn’t refer to either memo set, but since its lead lawyer was the same one leading the (subsequently dismissed) 2008 Kivalina v. Exxon lawsuit with its unmistakable enslavement to both memo sets, I include King County in my “Exxon Knew” lawsuits list. A little tenuous, perhaps, but the attorney connection between the two cases begs for much deeper investigation.

Regarding Boulder v Suncor, my dissection showed how the filing shared too many passages in a suspect way with other lawsuits that were enslaved to those memo sets, and how there were connections of the handlers of the lawsuit, EarthRights International (ERI), to other notorious accusers who are enslaved to regurgitating the “reposition global warming” memos as evidence of industry disinformation campaigns.

Now, I’m much more comfortable with my placement of Boulder in my list of 28, as the title of this blog post implies. Watch this:

Continue reading →