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.

They’d already previously filed 19 ‘boilerplate copy’ lawsuits across the U.S. and are assisting with four others. Apparently they couldn’t let this potential opportunity slip out of their hands. Tough questioners will ask me, “why do you assign the ‘boilerplate copy’ label to this one when the only time we see the firm’s name in this thin little 27-page filing is in the mid- lower-part of the very last page?” Somewhat easy answer, actually. The first clue for me was simply that this short filing contained the sentence “El Consejo de Información para el Medio Ambiente (en inglés, The Information Council for the Environment, o ICE). That ICE campaign accusation. The second clue was the filing’s reference to “Anejo A” — translation: “A more detailed description of the facts on which this complaint is based is included in Exhibit A …”

I said “somewhat easy answer” because that official Spanish language PDF file copy was not put out to the public via an online file by the Departamento de Justicia de Puerto Rico, it instead comes from the Center for Climate Integrity (that CCI — notice the “Kert Davies” name in that CCI page screencapture, you’ll see a pattern forming here). CCI’s Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico did not include “Anejo A” / Exhibit A.

It was nowhere to be found on the internet that I could readily find when I began composing this blog post on August 5th.

So, I went straight to the source, contacting Puerto Rico’s Departamento de Justicia to ask for a copy of “Anejo A.” I received it from them within an hour, and I heartily thanked the woman for providing so quickly. Perhaps one day she will thank me for what I do in this lawfare arena.

My English version file copy of the 27-page filing, translated via GoogleTranslate, is here. My upload of the 91 page Spanish language “Anejo A” is here. My English-translated version is here. From that, let’s begin the checklist proving this is a Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuit. Every one of their boilerplate copy filings has these first four cornerstone accusation items:

✓ Ye olde accusation about the “reposition global warming” memos set — PDF file page 31, print page 56, with the requisite citation cascade source to the Union of Concerned Scientists’ “Dossier #5” rather than the much older, and more damaging to Sher Edling, Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action source — UCS own actual source, which thanks Kert Davies for the info. But why is there so much of a disparity between the PDF page count and the print page count? I’ll get to that at the end of this short overall checklist.

✓ Ye olde “victory will be achieved memos — PDF file page 43, with the requisite citation of the innocuous-looking “DocumentCloud” file, when just little changes to that weblink reveals Kert Davies – there’s that name again – uploaded it to Document Cloud when he worked at Greenpeace.

✓ the “Chicken Little” / “Doomsday” / “Most Serious Problem” ‘advertorials’ trio — PDF file page 32 (the GoogleTranslate system overlaid the words from the ad images onto the images). The first two both disingenuously cropped at the bottom, the third one is missing its bottom text altogether. The images in these lawsuits – not that Sher Edling ever discloses that – ultimately source from Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action’s horridly degraded scan copies. Not that Greenpeace permits any member of the public see these anymore. Ozone Action was merged into Greenpeace USA – Kert Davies worked at Ozone Action before working at Greenpeace.

✓ “Bankroll” / “funded scientists” – a.k.a. the false accusation about former Harvard Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon being bribed by Exxon — PDF file pages 44-45. The twist here is how Sher Edling reverted back to using the Internet Archive page version of a 2015 Smithsonian Institute Press release webpage. Unlike the inexplicable switch they pulled for their prior boilerplate copy Chicago v BP filing that essentially lifted their new alternative citation link from California v Exxon . . . . . which itself lifted the main accusation with minor word swaps straight out of the Sher Edling-handled New Jersey filing’s accusation paragraph against Dr Soon (to see more on that switcheroo / plagiarism problem, skip down to my “✓ ‘Bankroll’ / ‘paid’ / ‘funded scientists‘ checkmark section in my dissection of Chicago).

While loyal readers of my blog will see this as an oft-repeated beatdown of the four check items, I’ll summarize again for the benefit of any new readers arriving here:

• Neither of those memos’ directives / suggestions were ever implemented anywhere; a never-used proposal, by default cannot serve as evidence of people acting under the plan.
• the “Chicken Little” / “Doomsday” were never published anywhere. The “Most Serious Problem” one was indeed an officially newspaper-published advertorial by the Western Fuels Association “ICE”-acronym public relations campaign; a reading of its text (zoom in here) reveals no disinformation within it.
• Dr Soon did not fail to disclose his funding. The most basic of questions arises out of that situation – if he had been caught red-handed doing so at the a conclusion of the Smithsonian’s 2015-2020 investigation, wouldn’t Kert Davies, Greenpeace and the collective enviro movement have already shouted this from the mountaintops??

Meanwhile, even though there are others (compare what’s in this filing to Sher Edling’s other boilerplate copy filings), one more item in this Annex A that’s seen in many of the others, for emphasis to seal the deal on the overarching problem:

✓ The “Richard Lawson memo” — PDF file pages 31-32. The memo isn’t damaging, it simply voices an industry concern of what happens if they capitulate to anti-science / emotion-based feelings about where the climate was headed. There was another science-based side, something the actual ICE PR campaign wanted to show. The mention of the Lawson memo in these lawsuits is actually damaging to the enviro-activist side because of who the source of the memo is: Naomi Oreskes, in her hugely problematic chapter contribution piece in someone else’s obscure book, which falsely places the “reposition global warming” memos in an archive they’ve never been in, while mentioning the above-noted advertorials being in the same archive, handled by an ex-U.S. Senate staffer associated with Al Gore, who alerted her to them.

Meanwhile, the question arising out of this basically, technically ‘bulk of the lawsuit hidden-from-public-view’ problem concerning this Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico filing is … why was is this thing put together this way? Milberg Coleman’s Municipalities of Puerto Rico v Exxon was 247 pages long, no hidden attachment.

Perhaps the answer is indicated by the big skip in this Annex A’s print page number versus the PDF file page count. PDF files are sometimes off because a printout may not number its cover sheet or blank page after a cover, or its table of contents. In such instances, you’d see a print page 1 being numbered PDF file page 3. Perfectly understandable when that happens. Here, I’ll show screencaptures of the original Spanish language copy to prove the page numbering discrepancy does not result from the GoogleTranslate version.

From page 1 of the PDF file, its cover is already labeled as print page 3. There might have been some other end-of-lawsuit ‘internal housekeeping’ pages before this attachment to the filing started. So, simply add 2 to each print page number to get this filing’s PDF page number. The pattern continues up until PDF page 14 / print page 16. No reason for that pattern to stop, is there?

But it abruptly changes big-time at the end of PDF file page 15.

Hence the above note about the “reposition global warming” accusation appearing on PDF file page 31 / print page 56. This ‘add 25 pages to the PDF file count’ continues unchanged to the last page.

That’s weird. At a rock bottom minimum, it indicates that the majority, if not all, of this “Annex A” comes from a larger document somewhere that at one time was collectively and continuously at least 116 pages long. The question for congressional investigators / attorneys defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / unbiased investigative reporters is as simple as it gets: what’s going on here? Minimally, I can provide one small answer after laboriously rummaging through all the Sher Edling boilerplate copy / Sher Edling-assisted filings, and the other supposedly ‘Independently-led’ filings — the representative matching text I used in my searches doesn’t correspond (where I did find it) to any matching page number. For example Honolulu’s print page 45 / Minnesota’s print page 24 / California’s print page 44 in comparison to this Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico’s page 16.

This “Anejo A,” in an original English version, at 116 pages with whatever the missing 25 pages additionally contain, had to come from somewhere. Is it actually the original template that Sher Edling (or some ‘advisors’) created for use in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits where it could be tailor-made to fit whatever the local plaintiff’s needs were? Is this latest in the string of Sher Edling boilerplate copy filings a clumsy desperation effort to be sure the Milberg Coleman / copycat David Efron Esq rivals don’t walk off with all the Puerto Rico settlements cash? And in particular, what is up with the burial of the major part of Sher Edling’s boilerplate ‘evidence’ under some “Annex A” attachment?

As ever, there is not a “slew” of “ExxonKnew” lawsuits it’s the same single lawsuit over and over again, built on cornerstone ‘evidence’ that would shatter to a million pieces if someone merely looks at it sideways. It offers no tidy set-in-concrete answers — unable to make even a prima facie case with its worthless ‘evidence’, in other words — that the industry ran disinformation campaigns employing ‘liars-for-hire’ scientists to deceive the public in disinformation campaigns. It only heaps more questions onto the pile of how these lawsuits are assembled in the first place.