CLW readers recall the claim made by a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York of a “missing link” between donors, activists and elected law enforcement and other officials, in dismissing the idea that these parties have all improperly combined to orchestrate the ongoing “climate” lawfare sweeping courts around the country. That same court ruled yesterday in an opinion in the City of New York’s latest bite at the apple, City of New York v. Exxon Mobil Corporation, et al.
The first footnote, on the first page, does rather give the plaintiff’s game away. But that’s for another day.
This case which simply rewrote a previous, dismissed lawsuit by the City from tort to “consumer protection.” Turning its telescope around, the court declared it was the energy company defendants who were “grasping at straws” in removing this case to federal court—just as some pre-reinvention iterations of the climate litigation were successfully removed, prompting said reinvention. From that position, the court then ordered the defendants to pay the City’s costs of defending the effort to remove the case.
Remarkable. Though, as the earlier, risible-at-the-time “missing link” claim suggested and now thoroughly debunked, this court is not favorably disposed toward these defendants.
Energy Policy Advocates filed an amicus brief in this latest matter laying out the background the court somehow missed in declaring the apparent public-private climate litigation industry was really just a series of unrelated coincidences. Expect more to come on this one.