ExxonMobil Sues Rob Bonta, NGOs, Alleging Plastic Recycling Smears

ExxonMobil filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Beaumont, Texas Monday, targeting California Attorney General Rob Bonta and an array of environmental NGOs including the Sierra Club over what it says are smears related to its advanced plastic recycling business. In addition to the Sierra Club, other NGOs named as defendants include Surfrider Foundation, Inc., Heal the Bay, Inc., Baykeeper, Inc., and Intergenerational Environment Justice Fund (IEJF) Ltd.

The lawsuit alleges that the “[d]efendants’ blatant misstatements and attacks on ExxonMobil’s character are targeted at ExxonMobil’s operations in Texas and are actively harming ExxonMobil’s reputation, as well as its contracts with existing and prospective customers.” The controversy is specific to the company’s advanced plastic recycling technology, which I wrote about here last May, and which has led ExxonMobil to become one of the largest recyclers of plastics in the United States. The company has invested billions in a second recycling unit at its Baytown Refinery in Texas, scheduled to begin operations in 2025, advancing its plan to raise its recycling capacity to 1 billion pounds per year by 2027.

Bonta’s Lawsuit Served As A Catalyst

So, why would the defendants, all of whom nominally claim to favor more plastic recycling, be opposed to any of that? Well, Bonta sued ExxonMobil in September, accusing the company of violating several state laws including laws against false advertising, water pollution, and unfair competition.

“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,” Bonta said when his lawsuit was made public.

ExxonMobil accuses Bonta of having “publicly and in his personal capacity attacked ExxonMobil’s character to raise money for his political campaign.” The suit further quotes several of what it alleges are false attacks by Bonta on ExxonMobil and its recycling business. “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,'” the complaint says.

Exxon Alleges A Coordinated Lawfare Project

The central argument in the suit filed Monday focuses on what it says is a project organized by IEJF, a charity founded by “one of the largest shareholders of an Australian mining conglomerate that is presently competing with ExxonMobil in the Low Carbon Solutions and energy transition sector, all Foreign Interests.” The suit alleges that, because IEJF didn’t want to sue the company under its own name, it retained a U.S. law firm to engage in “political activities,” and recruit the other domestic NGOs named in the complaint to serve as its proxies in going after the company and its recycling efforts.

ExxonMobil says the firm – San Francisco based Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP (“Cotchett”) – “signed up the US Proxies—Defendants Sierra Club, Surfrider, Heal the Bay, and Baykeeper—as nothing but local placeholders, acting for the foreign business interests competing in U.S. courts rather than the marketplace.”

In response to the suit, The Hill quotes Sierra Club spokesperson Jonathan Berman as saying, “Exxon is clearly confused about the difference between defamation and accountability. This lawsuit is a shameless attempt at intimidation by a multibillion dollar polluter corporation that covered up its climate change denial for decades.”

ExxonMobil’s complaint also cites an unnamed Baykeeper executive director as saying that, “Exxon’s plastic polymers are poisoning waterways, wildlife and people,” and “this stuff is killing us a little bit more every day,” as evidence of defamatory statements about the company.

But, when asked for comment, a spokesperson for Baykeeper responded with an emailed statement attributed to executive director Sejal Choksi-Chugh expressing similar themes: “Exxon’s retaliatory lawsuit is a transparent attempt by one of the world’s largest corporations to intimidate those who hold it accountable for its actions and for misleading the public,” adding, “We’ll continue to defend San Francisco Bay and everyone who lives in the Bay Area from single-use plastics that harm human health and pollute our planet.”

The Bottom Line

In the end, ExxonMobil alleges that the coordinated attack on its reputation by Bonta and the other defendants amounts to “business disparagement, defamation, tortious interference with contract, tortious interference with prospective business relationships, civil conspiracy” and “seeks, among other relief, an award of damages and an injunction requiring Defendants to retract their defamatory statements and to cease interfering with ExxonMobil’s existing and prospective business relationships.”

Thus, a lawfare campaign over plastic recycling begets a major countersuit. It’s hard to blame ExxonMobil for moving to defend itself in the face of what appears to be a well-coordinated attack on multiple fronts, but what a waste it seems to witness so much time and energy invested by so many people constantly tied up in nonproductive court battles such as these.