California wins state venue for claims ExxonMobil misled public about plastic recycling

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — California’s claims that ExxonMobil misled the public for 50 years about the efficacy of plastic recycling are back in state court after a federal judge sided with the state and restored the lawsuit’s original venue.

Following ExxonMobil’s notice of removal to federal court, the California Department of Justice filed a motion to remand the case, which Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg granted in a 15-page order Monday night.

Seeborg called ExxonMobil “misguided” in its argument that the injuries California asserts it suffered happened on federal lands, such as shorelines and waterways, including Monterey Bay. California says it expressly disclaims and won’t seek relief for injuries arising on federal land.

“California, however, is ‘the masters of the claim.’ By bringing only state claims in a state court, and expressly disavowing injuries on federal lands, the state has established that neither claims nor relief could lie in federal enclaves, let alone have such enclaves as their loci,” wrote Seeborg, a Barack Obama appointee.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said he was pleased with the decision to remand the case and that his office was ready to “hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis through its campaign of deception.”

“ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they knew this wasn’t possible,” he said.

ExxonMobil’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment before this story was published.

In its 147-page complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court last September, Bonta claimed that for the past 50 years, ExxonMobil has used deceptive marketing and misleading public statements to promote recycling as an effective solution for plastic pollution even though the oil giant knows most plastics are not and cannot be recycled.

ExxonMobil’s messaging led consumers to purchase and use more single-use plastic than they otherwise would have, according to the state.

Though most consumers know ExxonMobil as an oil company, it is also the world’s largest producer of polymers, materials made from fossil fuels that are used in single-use plastics like utensils and packaging.

Bonta said that since the 1970s ExxonMobil hid behind industry trade and front groups with environmentally friendly names to peddle the deception that plastic is recyclable; flooded the market with ads that hid the truth about plastic’s recyclability; and upheld the “myth” that plastic was recyclable.

The state, if it succeeds, seeks to establish an abatement fund to the tune of billions of dollars, Bonta said, to fund reeducation efforts to tell the public the truth about plastic recyclability through advertisements and similar work. The state also seeks disgorgement of profits and civil penalties under California’s Unfair Competition Law.

The suit is the first in the country’s history to take on a fossil fuel company for its messaging around plastic recycling, and capped a state Department of Justice investigation that started in 2022 and spanned over two years. The investigation probed the role of fossil fuel and petrochemical companies in the global plastics waste crisis.

The subpoenas uncovered never-before-seen documents, according to Bonta.

Four environmental organizations — Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay and Baykeeper — separately filed their own lawsuit raising similar issues about ExxonMobil’s role in global plastic pollution on the same day as the state’s lawsuit last September. The two cases have been related and are moving along a similar procedural path.