GROUPS, SENATOR CHALLENGE EXXON DEAL

New Jersey’s $225 million settlement with Exxon Mobil shortchanged the public, four environmental organizations and a Democratic state senator told an appeals court Monday, adding they should be allowed to push for more cash. State Sen. Ray Lesniak and an attorney for the environmental groups continued their push to intervene in New Jersey’s settlement with the Texas petroleum company Monday, arguing before a three-judge appeals court in Trenton the trial judge was wrong to deny them the ability to intervene in the 2015 settlement. The state’s legal fight against Exxon goes back to 2004, when New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection brought a suit over decades of pollution at oil refineries in Bayonne and Linden.