{"id":226991,"date":"2022-11-02T19:06:44","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T18:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=226991"},"modified":"2022-11-02T19:06:52","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T18:06:52","slug":"whos-funding-the-climate-lawsuits-do-the-plaintiffs-even-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=226991","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Funding the Climate Lawsuits? Do the Plaintiffs Even Know?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Climate Litigation Watch takes a deep dive into the funding <\/a>of the boilerplate lawsuits being filed around the country by Sher Edling LLP.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Climate Litigation Watch.<\/a> Emphasis mine…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More on the Mysterious Email About Hollywood\u2019s Backdoor Funding of Government Climate Litigation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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Posted on 

CLW readers know<\/a> that New Jersey recently joined the wave of \u201cclimate\u201d litigants claiming that energy companies caused global warming, to the plaintiffs\u2019 detriment, and seeking to extract hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars (each) and also influence or even change federal policy, effectively imposing an agenda repeatedly rejected by a majority of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These suits began as nuisance actions which, after some setbacks in court, transmogrified into mostly \u201cconsumer fraud\u201d claims. Similarly, after finding out the hard way that the federal courts offer no succor for these claims, the message became a fevered insistence that the suits were in reality a series of unrelated coincidental purely state law<\/em> matters, with which the federal courts should not bother themselves despite the obviously coordinated, national campaign and designs on circumventing the proper democratic process for adopting policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Jersey, too, hired the California law firm Sher Edling, LLP, to handle its case, a firm recently revealed<\/a> to have received millions of dollars in \u201ccharitable grants\u201d to support \u201chealthy communities\u201d and other buzzwords not exactly reporting what, emails show<\/a>, the money actually was going for \u2014 these climate lawsuits.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politicians then promised the same firm many, many millions each out of damages purportedly suffered by their taxpayers, to pursue the suits we now know the firm was already being paid to pursue. Obviously, that raises questions of disclosure<\/a> \u2014 e.g., what did Keith Ellison know<\/a>, and when did he know it: was he duped, or was he in on it? Which in turn raises the issue of elected officials\u2019 fiduciary responsibilities to the state and its taxpayers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pass-through charitable grants to finance the politicians\u2019 \u201ccontingency fee\u201d litigation<\/em> came from a group called Resources Legacy Fund, or RLF, which was financed by other entities routing the money there, including Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, Fox News reported<\/a> that the RLF\u2019s vehicle for this work, the \u201cCollective Action Fund,\u201d had been transferred to the New Venture Fund, the political Left\u2019s financial \u201cmothership<\/a>\u201d and \u201cLiberal Dark Money Juggernaut<\/a>,\u201d as \u201cA fiscally sponsored project<\/a> of New Venture Fund, the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the money being used to pay for (\u201ccontingency fee\u201d) climate litigation by activist politicians is now thrown onto this multi-billion pile then stirred and passed-through yet again. In short, while parties can now guess, this does a much better job obscuring the financiers of this rather questionable public-private partnership to file what a federal court once described<\/a> thus (in a very similar context): \u201cThe point of the multi-front strategy thus was to leverage the expense, risks, and burden to Chevron of defending itself in multiple jurisdictions to achieve a swift recovery, most likely by precipitating a settlement.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing us back to New Jersey. Our friends at Energy Policy Advocates inform CLW that New Jersey\u2019s Office of the Attorney General declares its principals involved in the new lawsuit have \u201cno records\u201d referencing RLF over the most likely period of time that they would have corresponded about such outside financing of its possible litigation \u2014 if they did correspond<\/em> about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You see, New Jersey, Like Minnesota, South Carolina, and indeed nearly all plaintiff jurisdictions have rules of professional conduct that require \u201cinformed consent\u201d by the client when someone else pays for its lawyers.<\/strong> So far, despite no small amount of digging, Energy Policy Advocates has found no record of any such consent among the Minnesota, et al. plaintiffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energy Policy Advocates has found only one reference to RLF \u2014 outside of the Minnesota AG circulating the defendants\u2019 notice of removal<\/a> of the District of Columbia\u2019s case from local court to federal court, and a subsequent brief, in which the defendants laid out for the court this scheme as suspected at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This came from a climate plaintiff whose legal ethics rules are the anomaly in that they do not require informed consent, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Anne Arundel has admitted to one email discussing the group, sent about eight weeks before it filed suit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No other plaintiff jurisdiction has admitted to any correspondence mentioning \u201cResources Legacy Fund\u201d or RLF\u2019s email domain. Leaving CLW to draw the most obvious and reasonable conclusions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First is that it seems inescapable that the lawyers did not inform their clients who, under applicable ethics rules, absolutely had to give their consent to this arrangement; if that is the case it suggests the lawyers have some problems ahead of them. Alternately, they did so inform their clients but everyone (save one person, once, in Anne Arundel) kept to a strict omerta; if that is the case, the politicians who promised a massive double-dip to the lawyers out of supposed taxpayer damages, and any enablers, will face serious questions about their fidelity to fiduciary obligations.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, this March 2021 email is likely doing one of two things. It could be informing colleagues of something that Hamilton Tyler found on the internet, e.g., a law professor raising<\/a> tax and ethical questions in July 2020 about what seemed at the time to be going on behind the scenes (subsequently confirmed). Second, Mr. Tyler could be discussing that which he had been informed and which had otherwise been reserved, in all other jurisdictions apparently, for the telephone: the firm on which we are about to bestow a generous contingency fee arrangement is already being paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless and until this email is released the public won\u2019t know for sure which of these scenarios is the actual one. None of them look very promising for the parties involved. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more curious aspect of this remains why there is no record of any such disclosure of the arrangement in the jurisdictions where that disclosure is required. CLW believes this aspect of the climate litigation industry is definitely one to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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via Watts Up With That?<\/mark><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

November 2, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who’s Funding the Climate Lawsuits? Do the Plaintiffs Even Know?<\/a><\/blockquote>