EXXON COUNTERS HEALEY
Company wants climate order blocked
Exxon Mobil asked the state’s highest court to block an order stemming from Attorney General Maura Healey’s investigation into whether the oil giant hid for decades its own scientific findings about the impact fossil fuels have on speeding up climate change.
Exxon appealed yesterday a lower court ruling backing Healey’s use of a state “long-arm statute” to force the company to cough up everything it knew about climate change and whether it hid that information from consumers and investors.
For Healey’s Exxon probe to move forward, the court needs to agree that the Irving, Texas-based oil and gas giant has a substantial enough link to Massachusetts to give her jurisdiction.
The more than 300 Exxon-branded service stations in Massachusetts was enough of a threat for the lower court to sign off on Healey’s investigation into what Exxon knew about climate change.
Exxon lawyer
Justin Anderson THE LAW dismissed the franchise gas stations as independently owned and operated — although they pay Exxon fees for the branding and sign agreements with the gas giant — explaining the stations don’t even fill their tanks with Exxon gasoline. “What they need to establish is we have done something in the state,” Anderson said. “It can’t simply be the case that the attorney general looks across the country and identifies speech about climate change she does not like, groups that take positions on climate change she does not approve of and issues subpoenas so they can be dragged to Massachusetts to answer questions.”
The AG’s chief legal counsel, Richard Johnston, said Exxon wants the justices to “essentially suspend common sense and your own cognizance of what is going on in this commonwealth,” arguing instead that the company has “consistently done business here in Massachusetts.”
Exxon corporate controls marketing and advertisement at its franchise stations and in its agreement with the stations refers to them as “our stations” and people pumping gasoline there as “our customers,” Johnston said.
Asked what links the hundreds of Exxon or Mobil stations to the corporation’s alleged cover-up of climate change science, Johnston said the pump is the point of sale for one of “the premier contributors to global warming.”
Exxon sued Healey in Massachusetts and in Texas to block her 38-point civil subpoena for decades of the company’s environmental research. The company also argued Healey’s investigation should be halted because she exhibited bias against Exxon in press events prior to her investigation.