The climate lawfare campaign targeting oil and gas companies suffered another big setback in an Oregon court in recent days.
A lawyer for the plaintiff in the case was forced to admit he failed to disclose his funding of a pair of studies that had been introduced as evidence. One defendant says the episode exposes the ethically dubious ties among local governments recruited as plaintiffs, their attorneys, and advocacy groups that have fueled this lawfare drive despite a long string of losses in at least 10 jurisdictions over the past two years.
The case involves a $51 billion lawsuit filed by Multnomah County against an array of energy producers, typical of the campaign’s scattergun approach to mining for deep pockets. One defendant, Chevron, said in a motion that the county’s lead counsel, Roger Worthington, failed to disclose his personal role in producing two studies published in the journal Nature that the county’s experts later cited as independent scientific evidence. One article credited “partial support” from Worthington, while another appeared in draft form on his firm’s website, both used to bolster claims blaming oil companies for a 2021 heatwave.
