'This Isn't the End,' Vow Climate Campaigners After New York Court Sides With Exxon in Fraud Trial

Climate campaigners bemoaned a judge’s ruling in New York on Tuesday which sided with ExxonMobil in a lawsuit that charged the oil giant defrauded investors by concealing for decades what it understood about how carbon pollution was contributing to global warming.

The lawsuit, stated Judge Barry Ostrager of the trial-level state Supreme Court in his ruling, “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.”

The judge further noted that New York State Attorney General Letitia James, in presenting the state’s case, “produced no testimony from any investor who claimed to have been misled by any disclosure, even though the Office of the Attorney General had previously represented it would call such individuals as trial witnesses.”

The lawsuit, People of New York v. ExxonMobil, attracted national and international media attention for being the most high-profile effort yet to hold the fossil fuel industry to account for misleading the global public about what—and crucially when—it knew about the destructive results of digging up and burning billions and billions of tons of coal, oil, and gas.

In response to the court’s decision, Dominique Thomas, a New York organizer with 350.org, said that while the ruling was a disappointment it would do nothing to dampen the demands for Exxon to be held accountable for its behavior.