Borrowing a line from the day-later UK Guardian<\/em> news flash<\/a> about this May 28, 2025-filed lawsuit<\/a> – and by default, all the prior “ExxonKnew” lawsuits I’ve dissected<\/a> – “Previous suits accused companies of breaching product liability and consumer protection laws and engaging in fraud and racketeering. But [Leon v Exxon Mobil Corp<\/em>] is the first attempt to hold oil companies responsible for an individual climate-related death.” Yes, first-ever lawsuit using that lawfare tactic, but not the first time I’ve seen it pushed. I first wrote about this ridiculous personal injury angle, from David Arkush of the “Public Citizen” group, back in March 2023<\/a>. He’d submitted his ‘scholarly paper’ draft version to the Harvard Law Environmental Review (HELR) on the notion of ‘climate homicide,’ which inadvertently showed his nearly complete<\/a> enslavement to the same meritless ‘evidence’<\/em> which most the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits claim is proof that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns employing skeptic climate scientist ‘shills.’ When his paper was finally published in May 2024, I firmly suggested to HELR that his paper needed to be retracted<\/a>. HELR did not do so, which thus only gave Arkush and Public Citizen the green light to proceed full steam ahead on the idiotic idea. Upon seeing Arkush and Public Citizen putting out a proposal to Arizona prosecutors just two months later on how to charge for ‘climate homicide,’ my blog post title for my dissection of his proposal<\/a> posed the question of whether he was doing nothing more than trying to – ineptly – muscle his way into the lawfare territory already staked out in 2017 by the San Francisco Sher Edling law firm. I say “ineptly” because he ultimately used all<\/em><\/strong><\/a> of the four core accusation elements<\/a> seen in their multiple filings.<\/p>\n No public prosecutors took the bait. But an apparently not-especially-bright law firm did. The questions now concern how directly Arkush \/ Public Citizen are involved in the case, and whether this new angle case is actually an outgrowth of a common shared template which all the other law firms \/ law offices seem to be using, where they choose elements of it as they see fit. In this dissection, I’ll show possible tell-tale ‘lawsuit template’ connections, including this case’s enslavement to two of the four worthless accusation elements. There’s three other utterly fatal overarching problems to this newest lawsuit effort, of course.<\/p>\n These first two items are what I used to additionally corroborate that the Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuits were indeed exactly what I described them as, copying the same basic text from one filing of theirs to their next client. While that may not be a problem for that law firm, it could be for the others.<\/p>\n \u2713 The 1977 “James Black Exxon Report,” PDF File page 27, paragraphs 4.41 and 4.42<\/a>. Compare what’s seen in my screencapture there to Sher Edling’s latest filing, the 5\/1\/25 Hawaii v BP<\/em><\/a> lawsuit, and to Sher Edling’s 2017 San Mateo v Chevron<\/em><\/a>. Understandable that Sher Edling would use their own material repeatedly . . . . but what explains essentially the same repetition in other filings supposedly having no association whatsoever with Sher Edling? Hoboken v Exxon<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Connecticut v Exxon<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 California v Exxon<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 On top of all that, is attorney Matt “the legal brains behind the campaign against the industry<\/a>” Pawa’s King County v BP<\/em><\/a> filing \u2014 filed in the same court as this Leon v Exxon<\/em> case. Imagine if a judge in the King County Superior Court said, “what a minute, where have I seen this before??<\/a>”<\/p>\n \u2713 The “Joseph Carlson memo,” PDF file page 38, paragraph 4.53<\/a>. Compare that to Sher Edling’s Dec 2023 Makah v Exxon<\/em><\/a>. Only five words are shared between these two, but one item that’s eerily similar is how both don’t simply quote the Carlson memo words in a way that makes them word-searchable in a PDF file; they both show them as scanned illustrations. The item that is very nearly identical is the citation link source for the memo \u2014 in Makah<\/em>, the “https:\/\/assets.” part at the beginning of the “DocumentCloud” link and the “.pdf” at the end automatically defaulted to a page<\/a> having no indication of who its source is<\/a>. It’s as though the Sher Edling law firm was trying to hide who the source was. Leon v Exxon<\/em> clearly shows the source<\/a> as Kert Davies at the Climate Investigations Center. It’s the identical 9-page document scan.<\/p>\n But Sher Edling is again not the only other law firm regurgitating the Carlson memo, I detailed that problem<\/a> at the end of my Dec 2022 Part 1 dissection of Puerto Rico v Exxon<\/em><\/a>. Hold the thought about Davies, his name will come up again in a similar problematic way.<\/p>\n \u2713 The false accusation about former Harvard Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon being ‘bribed by Exxon’ \u2014 PDF file page 17, paragraph 3.7<\/a>. This ongoing situation was getting so far out-of-hand by the beginning of this year that I had to compile a list of all the lawsuits naming Dr Soon<\/a> in this manner. Here, Leon v Exxon<\/em> finds itself in a deep hole because the filing offers no citation source whatsoever for the accusation. “\u2026 later exposed<\/strong> as receiving more than one million dollars in funding from the oil and gas industry<\/em> \u2026” Exposed by whom<\/em><\/strong>?? Not that they care to tell you, what was actually revealed within New York state Freedom of Information – Law (FOIL) documents which the Energy Policy Advocates watchdog site received in 2023<\/a>, the 2015 New York AG office had an upcoming meeting with \u2026 wait for it \u2026 Kert Davies and his former Greenpeace<\/a> \/ former Ozone Action boss<\/a> who were teased to the office attorneys as being ready to break the ‘news’<\/a> of Dr Willie Soon receiving huge industry payments. From beginning to end in this climate lawfare business, that accusation against Dr Soon has been completely false<\/a>, quite possibly to the extent of epic-level defamation. But again, hold the thought about Roland C “Kert” Davies<\/a> until the next checkmark paragraph.<\/p>\n \u2713 The “victory will be achieved” memos, PDF file page 46, paragraph 4.66.b<\/a>. It’s obviously a scan image. Who else did that? Sher Edling’s Makah<\/em> filing<\/a>. And the supposedly unrelated law firm representing County of Multnomah<\/em><\/a>. There’s far more – the collective prior situation surrounding the “victory”memo set is besieged with faults, as I showed in a series of blog posts in my specific category for it<\/a>. First and foremost, it was never implemented<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (never-implemented<\/a>!<\/em>) anywhere, thus it is worthless to prove industry disinformation campaigns happened. And just like the other situations above, there’s the Kert Davies problem surrounding it. Give Leon v Exxon<\/em> credit for its citation source linking straight to Davies<\/a>\u2019 [technically former<\/a>] Climate Investigations Center, but in doing so, the law firm here exposes a rather large problem for the Sher Edling law firm’s multiple citation sources throughout their<\/em> filings over the years. As I showed way back in my dissection of Honolulu v Sunoco<\/em>, Sher Edling’s citation source essentially hid Kert Davies association with just slight changes<\/a> to the online document file address. His association of working at Greenpeace<\/em><\/strong><\/a> when he uploaded that file.<\/p>\n So by switching to Davies’ CIC upload, is this new law firm essentially hiding how his work history may have contributed to his apparent vendetta (along with his former boss) against Exxon<\/a>? (notice what I have circled in that screencapture – hold that<\/em> thought for a bit)<\/p>\n \u29b8<\/strong>\u00a0 Meanwhile, what’s oddly missing from this filing? Ye olde<\/em><\/a> “reposition global warming” memo set (and the alleged newspaper ‘advertorials’<\/a> always seen hand-in-glove with it), the very best ‘ammunition’ the climate lawfare pushers have in their arsenal. It’s been so effective as a tool over the last nearly three decades that the topic of my just-prior blog post<\/a> was a true believer regurgitator of the accusation who actually did not remember where he saw it. However, similar to the way the U.S. House Oversight Committee Democrats’ 2021 subpoena letters<\/a> to fossil fuel executives were only enslaved to the “victory” memos and had citation sources separated by just one degree from the “reposition global warming” memo set, this filing suffers from the same basic fault. In two different places to support claims that the industry ran disinformation campaigns, they cite<\/a> “Geoffrey Supran & Naomi Oreskes, The Forgotten Oil Ads That Told Us Climate Change Was Nothing<\/em>, GUARDIAN (Nov. 18, 2021).” Yes, that<\/em> Oreskes<\/a> and that<\/em> article, where her lead-off ‘evidence’ items<\/a> were a pair of ads that were never<\/em> published by any<\/em> fossil fuel company – oil producer or otherwise – and where she said a PR campaign operated under a particular name and strategy directive … but the name was unsolicited by the campaign and never used<\/a>, and they never operated under any such directive<\/a>. So, her ‘expertise’ on that topic is out the window. And where did that accusation first attain growing media traction that never slacked down? At the place<\/a> Kert Davies and his former boss headed.<\/p>\n See the too-close-to-be-coincidental things happening here? Remember what I said two paragraphs above about the circled name in the Exxon vendetta email screencapture? Rockefeller Family Fund Director Lee Wassermann. Who was brought up out-of-the-blue praising this Leon v Exxon<\/em> filing in Common Dreams<\/em>\u2019 (a supposedly ‘independent news outlet<\/a>\u2019) report about the lawsuit<\/a>? You guessed it, Lee Wasserman via his Tweet\/X<\/a> about it. Why would any reader care what a guy at the Rockefeller Family Fund thinks about lawsuits – oh, right he’s part of the plan to get these things rolling<\/a>, isn’t he?<\/p>\n Notice who was quoted immediately above Wasserman in my screencapture of the Common Dreams<\/em> piece<\/a>: Public Citizen’s David Arkush.<\/p>\n That’s where a significant problem is potentially to be found. Do an internet search immediately surrounding the “first-ever wrongful climate death lawsuit<\/a>” news of this lawsuit, and a number<\/a> of results about Arkush’s ‘scholarly paper’<\/a> are found, stemming from the initial New York Times<\/em> article’s cursory mention of it<\/a>, treating the paper like it actually had some kind of merit over its ludicrous idea of charging oil companies with murder. It does not.<\/em><\/strong> Think about it, if climate change causes more extreme weather<\/a> to happen, then by default, a person like me – who’s become acclimated to heat from living in an area of the country routinely having 80\u00b0+ temperatures – could sue Big Oil if a sudden cold snap sent my into hypothermia<\/a>. Planeloads of people could sue Big Oil for unanticipated air turbulence<\/a> causing injuries. Boaters could sue Big Oil if their motorless sailboats are becalmed hundreds of miles offshore in normally windy areas. On, and on, endlessly. Back in the old days of common sense regarding appreciation of pure physics, victims would be ridiculed for not preparing for the unexpected.<\/p>\n That’s a harsh thing to say, but reality is what it is. One tough question to ask is – since the day’s weather was so brutally hot – why weren’t scores of drivers killed who had non-functioning air-conditioning? My sincere condolences for the daughter in this case who lost her mother, but as the lawsuit itself says<\/a>, her mother had undergone a major surgery<\/a> two weeks earlier with (as one site suggests) a 4 to 6 week recovery time before<\/a> everyday activity can be resumed. The questions here are whether the doctor at her followup appointment should be sued for malpractice if he gave her the go-ahead to drive if she was not actually fully recovered, or was the doctor unaware how she hadn’t arranged for a driver? Plus, did she even have any cool water or other means of keeping her body temperature down?<\/p>\n By the mid-1970s<\/a>, Defendants had known for almost 20 years that burning fossil fuels would lead to \u201cmarked changes in climate,\u201d150 including \u201cnoticeable increases in temperature\u201d significant enough to melt sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That one alone effectively kills the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, when in the face of all the news from the 1950s<\/a> \/ ’60s<\/a> \/ ’70s<\/a>, that the scary prospect was for a cooling<\/em><\/strong> world.<\/p>\n But forget the science aspect \u2014 you do not accuse<\/em><\/strong> a mass of people of committing wrongful death when you cannot even present a prima facie<\/em><\/a> case that the very actions you accuse them of doing actually ever happened.<\/p>\n If there’s one thing this case actually gets right, it’s in their “Prayer for Relief” section<\/a>:<\/p>\n For equitable relief, including, but not limited to, a public education campaign to rectify Defendants’ decades of misinformation.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Except that the request is aimed 180\u00b0 in the wrong direction. The public across the board needs to be educated about the decades of misinformation coming from the enviro-activists’ side, aided and abetted by a complicit legacy news media that never questioned any aspect about the only two pillars this issue has holding it up, “settled science” and “industry-paid skeptic scientists.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Borrowing a line from the day-later UK Guardian news flash about this May 28, 2025-filed lawsuit – and by default, all the prior “ExxonKnew” lawsuits I’ve dissected – “Previous suits accused companies of breaching product liability and consumer protection laws … Continue reading