Attorney General Rob Bonta. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
ExxonMobil Sues Calif. AG Rob Bonta, Environmental Groups Over Defamation
Oil giant sues following several years of targeted enviro lawsuits
By Evan Symon, January 7, 2025 2:45 am
Oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Intergenerational Environment Justice Fund, on Monday, claiming defamation over their plastic recycling initiatives.
For several years, Bonta and the state of California have gone after ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies over environmental issues. In 2022, Bonta issued subpoenas to companies involved in the “global plastics crisis,” with Exxon the first company targeted. Bonta then ramped up his efforts in 2023, filing a complaint accusing five major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, of deliberately lying about fossil fuels and contributing to climate change. Finally, in September of last year, Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil for allegedly engaging in “a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis”.
“Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage—in ways known and unknown—to our environment and potentially our health,” said Bonta in September 2024. “For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health. Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades-long deception, and we are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception.”
However, the oil giant took exception to the suit. Specifically, they found what Bonta was alleging to be wrong, including his Department’s claim that “ExxonMobil has been deceiving Californians for half a century through misleading public statements and slick marketing promising that recycling would address the ever-increasing amount of plastic waste ExxonMobil produces.”
ExxonMobil Sues Bonta
With their recycling programs attacked and California’s suit weighing down on the company, ExxonMobil responded back on Monday by suing Bonta and the associated environmental groups. The company sued Bonta and the groups in a federal Beaumont, Texas court, rather than a California court.
“Instead of coming alongside efforts to support a developing technology, Defendants are repeatedly and publicly attacking ExxonMobil with false accusations of being a ‘liar’ and declarations that advanced recycling is a ‘myth’ and a ‘sham,” Exxon said in their lawsuit. “With apparently no appreciation for the irony of their claim, Mr. Bonta and his cohorts are now engaging in reverse greenwashing. While posing under the banner of environmentalism, they do damage to genuine recycling programs and to meaningful innovation.
“The statements are a deliberate smear campaign in his personal capacity to drive up donations and publicity for his political campaign.”
While Bonta had often disparaged Exxon’s ability to recycle plastic, especially through the September 2024 suit, he had yet to score a legal victory against them. And, as of Monday night, his office has not yet responded to the suit.
Exxon, meanwhile, has asked for damages and a retraction of all defamatory statements.
“You can tell that Attorney General Bonta had been caught off guard by this,” explained environmental lawyer Leonard Grissom to the Globe on Monday. “Usually, with a defamation suit like this, they are quick to a response. But not here.
“And it’s odd. Exxon, as well as other big oil companies, have been going after environmentalists more and more. And Exxon’s reaction to the suit in September showed that they had just about enough of all this mishegoss. They assumed too much here, and this suit shows it. Bonta and those environmental groups are going to respond soon. And when they do, we are going to see exactly just what kind of legal battle we are in for. Oil companies usually don’t respond like this.”
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I’m not rooting for the oil companies, or against environmentalists, but empty suit Bonta needs his ass kicked. Most of California’s problems are caused by political over reach. Oil companies are the regular whipping boy, along with President Trump. Bonta thinks these lawsuits are the road to the governor’s office, but he has yet to win one. Somebody needs to be cut down a peg.
Would the State of California and Bonta have a problem with explaining how and if recycling works. Maybe this lawsuit will expose the recycling myth.
Bonta has been running for governor ever since he got last elected.
True, Jaye, but (as you know) Bonta is not going to get there by pulling stunts like this and doing a bad imitation of Worst Governor Ever Gavin Newsom, who by the way is universally loathed and has relied heavily on vote-buying, changing voting law through ill-used and unneeded Executive Order under cover of Covid, and outright rigging of elections, to be able to “win” political office. Not the sort of person a CA politician, or anyone, really, should be copying, especially when the rules are changing if they have not changed already. The rules are certainly —– at the very least —– headed in the right direction, and the sort of election cheating methods once available to the corrupt Dem politicians may not be available to them in 2026.
Apparently AG Bonta, and Gavin Newsom, too, have not noticed any of this, or if they have, are no longer flexible enough to change course but are stuck with the same old dirty bag of old dirty tricks.
Good luck!
I see a lot of conjecture and juvenile beliefs but no wellreasoned and factual rebuttal. Where are the facts? Because I say so doesn’t mean anything.
Would the State of California and Bonta have a problem with explaining how and if recycling works. Maybe this lawsuit will expose the recycling myth.
When plastics came out everyone loved them, used them, cherished them. They were a godsend. Fewer trips to the E.R. For stitches, it was safe to go barefoot in the sand again, and they were cheap. America made light weight containers, fabrics, carpets, and too many other products to list here.
If we follow the Bonta standard there will be no more new inventions because of what may happen 50 years down the road. Bonta might as well sue cavemen for inventing the fire that burns our forests. It is not Exxon’s job to find a solution to plastic pollution.
Good. Time to fight back against this long out of control California Democrat-led disaster of a state.
Wonder if Bonta was wearing those plastic framed glasses while drafting his manifesto targeting plastics? What a tool!
I know —- silly, isn’t it.
By the way, light-blue-framed glasses are a “tell” —- they signal leftism, incompetence, insecurity, attention-seeking, and they are a Dem “identity” accessory to alert your own tribe that you are one of them — but are not as glaring and obnoxious and attention-getting as red-framed glasses or giant white-framed glasses.
I am hoping that California will turn red. But that is a long shot.
It’s certainly possible. To me, it seems more than possible, considering that with our last election, the CA state map had a lot more red in it than it has had in a LONG TIME, and election results indicated a very noticeable rightward trend overall.
Consider supporting FixCalifornia.com as a practical, hands-on way to get there even sooner than we might otherwise get there — they have done excellent work.
CMK:
As long as we have rigged elections, that can’t happen. We lost two seats in Orange County because they spent two weeks “counting ballots” until they came up with what they needed to steal those seats.
Anything that interrupts that lightweight, cliche-ridden, not-very-bright, apparently corrupt, Rob Bonta and his usual crap, I’m 100% for it.
Good! In this case I am rooting for Exxon to wipe the smugness right off Bonta and his gang of “environmentalist” activists!
Go Big Oil!
Let the black gold flow!
It’s good that the lawsuit is in Texas. Maybe the jury will all be comprised of former Californians displaced by Bontas’ positions on Newsoms policies
The Californian government is obviously under control of the Chinese. Who collects our “recycling” and then dumps it half way to China creating the giant plastic patch that enviros wring their hands over?
So California has no part in this recycling “scam” even though they make me pay a nickel or dime recycling fee every time I buy a product that only comes in plastic containers? Even my eggs now come in plastic containers instead of the old paper based egg crate they used to come in. Profiteering on the part of the state I would say. Maybe the feds need to open a RICO investigation against California.
A lot of comments supporting Exxon here. Yet I can’t find any evidence that Exxon’s recycling is doing what they claim. Outside of what Exxon is “claiming”. This has very used car salesman vibes.
I’m not supporting failed lawsuit practices, but seems obvious Exxon is still screwing us over for profit.