California has filed an amended lawsuit against major oil companies, calling on a state court to strip the companies of profits gleaned through decades of what the state calls “false and misleading” marketing claims that have misled the public about climate-change risks from the fuels used by Californians to power their vehicles and the state's economy for more than a century.
Petroleum industry sources called the lawsuit "meritless" and said it was driven by left-wing politicians seeking to put a "foundational American industry" out of business.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the amended complaint on June 10 in San Francisco County Superior Court. The lawsuit filed against Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the American Petroleum Institute (API) seeks to take advantage of a disgorgement provision in a new state law, Assembly Bill 1366, which newly gave the state the power to target profits the state claims have been made through illegal conduct.
“This much is clear: Big Oil continues to mislead us with their lies and mistruths, and we won’t stand for that,” Bonta said in a prepared statement. “Their ongoing egregious misconduct is damning. We will continue to vigorously prosecute this matter and ensure that Big Oil pays to abate the harm they have caused, and we will recover ill-gotten gains that will benefit Californians.”
The legal complaint accuses the oil companies of allegedly obscuring the connections between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change in advertising and promotions that have spanned decades.
The API defended the industry’s record of providing affordable and reliable energy to Americans while reducing harmful emissions and pollutants.
“This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources,” API’s senior vice president and general counsel, Ryan Meyers, said in an email to the Southern California Record. “Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not a patchwork of courts.”
But the lawsuit portrays the defendants’ activities over multiple decades as a “massive public nuisance” requiring the courts to mitigate future environmental harm arising from the defendants’ actions.
“Defendants falsely and misleadingly portray (their) products as ‘green,’ and the fossil fuel defendants portray themselves as climate-friendly energy companies that are deeply engaged in finding solutions to climate change,” the lawsuit states. “In reality, … (the) defendants continue to primarily invest in, develop, promote and profit from fossil fuel products and heavily market those products to consumers, with full knowledge that those products will continue to exacerbate climate-change harms.”
In turn, the attorney general argues that seizing company profits is sensible due to the companies’ alleged violations of the state’s Unfair Competition Law as well as false advertising statutes. Any funds obtained from the companies would be used to provide restitution to consumer fraud victims in the state, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The state is asking for the court to establish an abatement fund so that the defendants can provide compensation in response to the so-called "public nuisance." The lawsuit also seeks to prevent future threats to California’s natural resources and to impose civil penalties of $2,500 against the defendants for each violation of numerous provisions of the Business and Professions Code, as well as compensatory damages, punitive and exemplary damages, reimbursement of investigation and prosecution costs, and an award for expert fees and attorney fees.