New York Doesn’t Need a Smoking Gun to Win the Exxon Climate Trial
The state’s powerful securities fraud law may place the energy giant at a disadvantage in the $1.6 billion landmark case.
Demonstrators protest on the first day of the ExxonMobil Corp. trial outside the New York State Supreme Court building in lower Manhattan.
Photographer: David 'Dee' Delgado/BloombergThe trial of New York’s $1.6 billion securities-fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil begins its second week Monday, after a series of witnesses failed to provide any concrete evidence that the oil giant knowingly misled shareholders about its climate change accounting.
Testimony by investors and employees did show a potential lack of clarity as to the difference between two measures of climate costs used by the energy giant. One is a public “proxy cost” for the impact of climate-change regulations on future energy demand, and the other a greenhouse gas (GHG) cost used internally to decide how to spend on new projects like drilling and oil sands.