Exxon Found Not Guilty of Fraud in Climate-Change Accounting Case: New York attorney general didn’t prove the company deceived investors, judge rules

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 10, 2019 | Corinne Ramey

[karpov]

A New York state judge found Exxon Mobil Corp. not guilty of fraud, saying Tuesday that the New York state attorney general had failed to establish the oil giant had deceived its investors about how it accounted for the cost of future climate-change regulations.

The verdict, which capped a nearly three-week civil trial between Exxon and the New York attorney general’s office, is a victory for the company, which had spent several years fighting the case. The company is also battling similar accusations in other state and federal courts.

In his 55-page ruling, New York State Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager said the attorney general’s office had failed to prove the company violated either the Martin Act, a broad antifraud statute commonly used to pursue financial crime, or other similar laws.

“The Office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,” Justice Ostrager wrote.

Still, he noted the case was a securities-fraud one, and his ruling only revolved around that issue. “Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve ExxonMobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases in the production of its fossil fuel products,” the judge wrote.

During the trial, the office of Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, accused the company of using two different accounting methods—one public, and one internal—to project its business costs in countries that were expected to implement policies to combat climate change. How the company planned for these costs mattered to investors, the office said, since it would impact the future health of the company.

The attorney general had estimated the damage to shareholders to be as much as $1.6 billion.

[billyboy15]

I know they got paid but the overriding reason for the suit was to basically extort a billion or so from EXXON under the guise of a BS suit. The money goes or would have gone straight into the NY State coffers.

[DannyTN]

Like the Goracle?

[Boogieman]

NO! Lighting them implies combustion which would just create more carbon!

If anything, you need to be extinguishing candles.

[bert]

New York is no longer America and must be purged from the Union