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Common Sense, Current Affairs, Liberal Logic, Man-made Climate Change Isn't Real 11.12.2019 No Comments
New York’s Stranded Exxon Case
A judge eviscerates the much ballyhooed climate-change suit.
PHOTO: CHONA KASINGER/BLOOMBERG NEWS Well, that was embarrassing. After spending nearly four years trying to nail Exxon Mobil for myriad climate-change deceptions, New York’s attorney general was excoriated Tuesday by a state judge for making “hyperbolic” claims and essentially trying to deceive the court.
In case readers missed it—and no doubt New York Attorney General Letitia James hopes you did—State Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager (appointed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo ) dismissed New York’s lawsuit alleging that Exxon violated the state’s Martin Act. That securities law merely requires that a “reasonable” investor might have been misled regardless of whether there was fraudulent intent, but the AG couldn’t even meet this low bar.
Former AG Eric Schneiderman started the legal excavation in 2015 aiming to show that Exxon concealed from the public what it knew about its climate harms. When discovery well after well ran dry, the AG’s office drilled into Exxon for projecting different carbon costs to investors than those it used internally for reviewing investments.
