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.
• the Pennsylvania Bucks County v. BP filing is almost a word-for-word copy of City of Chicago v. BP, as I detailed here. The law firm that filed Bucks County is noted as the assisting firm in the Chicago filing. which would explain the lame copy ‘n paste effort.
• Chicago v. BP – filed by a San Francisco law firm handling 18 other current ‘boilerplate copy’ “ExxonKnew” lawsuits containing virtually identical accusation paragraphs/citations – features a particular accusation paragraph and a directly related citation source copied straight from the California state Attorney General’s CA v Exxon filing. As I illustrated here, it was easier to drop in a translucent blue box to show where the identical wording ended. There is no public-stated credit given by CA AG Rob Bonta to the San Francisco firm. More here.
• CA v Exxon features a particular accusation paragraph copied nearly identically from the San Francisco law firm-handled filing against Exxon from the New Jersey Attorney General. I showed that and more here, including how the seemingly utterly unrelated-to-anybody-in-California Vermont v Exxon filing contained the virtually identically worded accusation paragraph …. which, as I showed in my dissection of Vermont, that wording was nearly identical to what was seen in the District of Columbia v Exxon filing …. which has assistance from the San Francisco law firm.
• San Juan v. Exxon, filed by a law firm with no obvious connection to the one that filed Puerto Rico v. Exxon, is almost a word-for-word copy of Puerto Rico, as I detailed here.
• the Oregon County of Multnomah v Exxon filing — 3500+ miles away from Puerto Rico — has accusation paragraphs (plural!) that are literally identical to ones in the Puerto Rico filing. More on that blunder here.
Hat tip to Climate Litigation Watch (CLW) for the news of Michigan AG Dana Nessel soliciting “Requests for Proposals” from attorneys and law firms for assistance in filing one of these idiotic anti-science, anti-intellectual lawsuits, with the goal being to actually file the thing sometime right after the beginning of August 2024.
The hapless plaintiffs in the ongoing pile of “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, aided and abetted by their clearly inept law firm handlers and whoever’s behind this traveling circus act from one state / county / municipality to the next, have already handed their heads on a silver platter to the defendants. I’ve detailed that in my dissections of these lawsuits.
Given the increasing predictability of the accusation paragraphs in these being hardly more than slight rearrangements of a few words from one supposedly unrelated law office to the next, it’s pretty much a sure bet this next one out of Michigan will be nothing more than yet another clumsy copy of the others, with the odds particularly favoring the AG office selecting the proposal submitted by the San Francisco law firm.
With the established track record of these lawsuits being enslaved in some form or another to a never-published advertorial, and to a pair of never-implemented (never implemented!) ‘leaked industry memos,’ what different result can we expect other than another blatant copy ’n paste filing from the Michigan AG?
Barring some kind of major miracle of prosecutors coming up with actual proof that can stand up in courtroom evidentiary hearings, one more repeat of the same old circus act will once again illustrate just how massively vulnerable all of these lawsuits are to being thrown out of court for failing to make a prima facie case that any fossil fuel industry engaged in disinformation campaigns employing shill skeptic scientists while publishing ‘advertorials’ they knew were falsely undercutting the ‘settled science’ of man-caused global warming.