Category Archives: Global warming lawsuits

Municipalities of Puerto Rico v. Exxon Mobil, et al. Part 2: RICO-teering

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Bad enough that this lawsuit filing from the Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman LLC law firm has a no-win appearance of being either a mismanaged effort guided by the Sher Edling law firm without any disclosure of that partnership, or it appears to be a spectacularly inept and possibly unethical plagiarizing of the accusation content and other bits from the 16 boilerplate copy Sher Edling lawsuits. I detailed all of that in my Part 1 blog post (handily reproduced at WUWT, enabling me to reach a wider reading audience).

Exponentially worse for Milberg Coleman is the widespread news assertions that their lawsuit filing “is unique” because it is “the first climate case against fossil fuel companies alleging harms against cities as a class of plaintiffs, and the first climate case to include Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) claims” as if this tactic is some kind of new idea. Many ‘news’ outlets belched out this RICO idea without questioning anything about it. It seems this mob is oblivious to the central hallmark of far-leftists, namely how they project what they do as accusations of what their political opposites do.

Why is all of this bad for Milberg Coleman? Because their RICO tactic doesn’t point to anything done by ‘Big Coal & Oil’ and skeptic climate scientists, it instead points an arrow the size of Texas at one of the core promulgators of the “crooked skeptic scientists” accusation. Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

“Brief Of Amici Curiae, Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Supran” Redux 3 — the Hawaii version

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As much as “Merchants of Doubt”documentary movie star/book author Naomi Oreskes wishes to be a “Friend of Various Courts” and a friend to plaintiffs Honolulu and Maui County in particular, her fourth filing of one of these only points a giant arrow once again at the way enviro-activists across the board really only have one viable weapon in their arsenal when it comes to supporting their notion that fossil fuel companies engaged in disinformation campaigns. Continue reading →

State Of Vermont v. ExxonMobil Corp. et al.

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The U.S. House Oversight Committee wasn’t the only major governmental entity to bring up ye olde “victory will be achieved” leaked memo set within the last few weeks as a “smoking gun” piece of evidence to indict the fossil fuel industry of conspiring with skeptic climate scientists to spread disinformation undercutting the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming. Just two days before that Committee sent out its September 16th intimidation letters to energy company officials, which prominently quoted the “victory” memos, Vermont’s Attorney General Thomas Donovan Jr filed his Vermont v. ExxonMobil lawsuit on September 14th, which featured that memo set’s notorious phrase on page 28.

AG Donovan’s same day press release succinctly summarized his lawsuit:

The lawsuit alleges past and ongoing violations of Vermont’s Consumer Protection Act for concealing crucial information and disseminating misleading statements and advertising about fossil fuels and climate change …

“Vermont consumers were given false and misleading information about the dramatic effects of these products on the climate. Vermonters have a right to accurate information in order to make informed decisions about the products they purchase.”

The gift AG Donovan hands on a silver platter to the energy companies is how those last two bits could be turned 180° away from the fossil fuel industry and aimed instead at the enviro-activist global warming industry, emphasizing how AG Donovan apparently didn’t undertake elemental due diligence on whether his cornerstone evidence had any validity, and emphasizing how the mainstream media’s abject failure to ask tough questions about the origins of that ‘evidence’ and the core clique of people surrounding it has ultimately led to AG Donovan possibly relying on that core clique for the “smoking gun evidence” in his lawsuit. Continue reading →

“Brief Of Amici Curiae, Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Supran” Redux 2 — the Minnesota version

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Just askin’ — if it can be argued that …

  • the overall issue of catastrophic man-caused global warming is a case study of how far-left enviro-activists would rather resort to character assassination (which the mainstream media never questions) of their critics rather than support their declarations about the ‘settled science’ with superior science-based evidence, …
  • and if the outright majority of the 25+ “Exxon Knew”-style / boilerplate-repeated lawsuits are a case study of how the character assassination efforts are enslaved to only two sets of never-implemented ‘leaked memos’ evidence to support the accusation that crooked industry executives and crooked skeptic climate scientist ‘shills’ colluded to deceive the public that the ‘settled science’ wasn’t settled, …
  • then is a Friend of the Court brief intended to support one of those lawsuits, apparently ineptly copied from two nearly identical prior briefs which repeated that worthless ‘memo sets’ evidence, a case study on how hand all of those potentially fatal problems to the energy company defendant lawyers on a silver platter? Continue reading →

Why Would Naomi Oreskes Be On Retainer With Any Law Firm?

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Just askin’, another in my series of posts asking questions that not only the inquisitive public and unbiased reporters should be asking, but also the law firms working for the defendant energy companies in the current 25 “Exxon Knew”-style global warming damages cost recovery lawsuits. Hat tip to Charles Rotter at WUWT for alerting me to Energy in Depth’s 5/13/21 report, “Bombshell: Naomi Oreskes On Retainer With Plaintiffs’ Law Firm.” Charles further points out that a same-day paper authored by Oreskes and co-researcher Geoffrey Supran (that Supran) had the note at the bottom, “The authors have no other relevant financial ties and declare no competing interests.”

Being on retainer with a law firm handling no less than 15 major global warming lawsuits is not a relevant financial tie, or at least minimally a competing interest, a.k.a. a conflict of interest??

But the problems and the questions don’t end there for Oreskes, Continue reading →

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 →

Throw One More Global Warming Lawsuit on the Sher Edling Pile

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Specifically, the Minnesota vs. API, et al. global warming lawsuit filed on 6/24/20 which I had previously labeled as an “independently-led” lawsuit in my list of all the “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits that allege fossil fuel company executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists to spread disinformation designed to undercut Al Gore’s ‘settled global warming science.’ In my June 26, 2020 dissection of this lawsuit, I noted how it rather predictably followed what appears to be an almost standard template for such lawsuits, where it dutifully offered both the worthless “reposition global warming” memo set (PDF file page 32) and the similarly worthless “victory will be achieved” memo set (PDF file page 34) as evidence to prove industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns misled the public. The usage of both memo sets is a hallmark of what I term the ‘boilerplate-identical’ lawsuits being handled by the Sher Edling law firm. It seems Sher Edling never learned that both sets were unsolicited by the groups they were proposed to, and that neither set was ever implemented in any fashion by any industry people as goals to achieve or guidelines to follow.

At the end of my dissection, after noting many other troubling connections between the lawsuit and longtime promulgators of those worthless memo sets, I asked a basic question: was this lawsuit an entirely independent effort undertaken by the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, or is there some kind of larger multi-state / municipality coordinated prosecution effort going on? A bit over a week ago, a new complication to the question appeared which doesn’t look especially helpful to the Minnesota AG’s office, or for any of the others filing such lawsuits. Continue reading →