Ghosts of Failed New York Climate Trial in Boston? - Climate Litigation Watch

Ghosts of Failed New York Climate Trial in Boston?

Energy in Depth has an item on a Tuesday ruling by a federal judge in Boston allowing Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s climate prosecution of ExxonMobil to proceed in state court, where she filed it, rather than the federal system. It was the specifics of the argument that reminded EID of the New York AG’s mortifying failure — “evisceration” — that concluded in December:

“The Massachusetts attorney general’s office argued in the hearing before Judge William Young today that their case is not about climate change. Instead, the attorney general’s office argued, this case is about whether ExxonMobil was truthful in its statements to consumer and investors:

“This is really not a case about carbon emissions, it’s not a case about any kind of pollution abatement, it is not a case about national treaties, and it doesn’t implicate any federal scheme, Your Honor. It’s a case about making sure we have accurate statements about the products and securities that ExxonMobil sells in the Commonwealth to its consumers and to its investors.”

That’s great news for ExxonMobil, because the truthfulness of their statements has already been thoroughly investigated, litigated, and deemed beyond reproach. Recall that the New York attorney general investigated this very issue for four years, reviewing millions of pages of documents, only to suffer a spectacularly embarrassing defeat in state court at the end of last year.”

CLW readers may recall that this “consumer protection” prosecution was pitched to five attorneys from AG Healey’s office at the “secret meeting at Harvard“, by UCLA Law School’s Cara Horowitz.

Ms. Horowitz is the one who wrote to her Center’s largest private donor:

All of which might well come before the court to explain what’s really going on in these remarkable public-private partnerships between activists, donors and law enforcement, to “go after” those who they view as standing in the way of an economic and policy agenda that can’t seem to convince the public. And, of course, to obtain a “sustainable funding stream.”