Litigators of the Week: On the Hot Seat, Paul Weiss Team Delivers a Cool Win for ExxonMobil in $1.6B Climate Change Suit
'There's no playbook or conventional wisdom out there for how to defend a case like this. We were really writing on a blank slate.'
December 13, 2019 at 01:22 AM
12 minute read
Our Litigators of the Week are Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partners Ted Wells, Dan Toal and Justin Anderson. The trio led a team that prevailed on behalf of ExxonMobil in a landmark climate-change lawsuit in New York state court in what's believed to be the first such case ever to be tried to verdict.
Suing under New York's infamous Martin Act, New York Attorney General Letitia James wanted $1.6 billion in damages, alleging that ExxonMobil made material misstatements about how it accounted for climate-related risks and that its climate disclosures had a material impact on investors.
After a 12-day trial, New York State Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager sided with the defense, holding that the state "failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor," and failed to offer "testimony from any investor who claimed to have been misled by any disclosure."
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