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.”
