One of the attorneys committed to taking down oil producers admitted two years ago that lawsuits directed at Exxon Mobil are more of a media strategy designed to generate attention than a legal pursuit.
Pursuing energy companies in the courts is an excellent way to generate media attention, even if it’s not an effective legal strategy, Richard Ayres said during a 2016 conference addressing the American Constitution Society. The video surfaces after a federal judge knocked down an Exxon lawsuit claiming investigations against the company were politically partisan campaigns.
“A RICO case, which points the finger and says ‘you violated the law,’ is a way of conveying that message to people, getting attention of course from the press, and in some ways we suspect that that outcome, that aspect of it might be more important even than winning the case,” Ayres said during the Febraury 2016 conference. Investigations against Exxon began in full force in 2015.
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Ayres attended the influential 2012 La Jolla conference, an event used to map out a strategy to use Democratic state attorneys general to sue companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act while also noting the media can help direct public attention toward the probes. The 2012 conference came three years before New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman began investigating Exxon for allegedly duping the public about climate change.
Exxon used the courts to fire back against what the company believed was political ploy to take out energy producers. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed a lawsuit Exxon filed in 2017 claiming the probes infringed on the company’s First Amendment rights. The lawsuit was directed at Schneiderman and his Massachusetts Democratic colleague, Attorney General Maura Healey.
“Exxon’s allegations that the AGs are pursuing bad faith investigations in order to violate Exxon’s constitutional rights are implausible and therefore must be dismissed for failure to state a claim,” Caproni said about the energy producer’s allegation the investigation was politically motivated.
Schneiderman, a Democrat who has gone after everything and everyone associated with Republican politics, including President Donald Trump, cheered Caproni’s decision in a press statement addressing the investigation.
Exxon is reviewing the decision and determining the best way to move forward. “We believe the risk of climate change is real and we want to be part of the solution,” the company said in a statement following the decision. Courts have dinged Schneiderman and Healey’s investigation for constantly shifting goal posts.
New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager, for instance, told Schneiderman in a July 2017 court hearing that the Democrat should either prove the probe is legitimate or bring the pursuit to a speedy conclusion.
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