A case that has taken nearly a decade to get to trial concluded Thursday morning after a 14-day trial in U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade’s courtroom when a Dallas jury unanimously sided with ExxonMobil in a securities class action in the Northern District of Texas.
“The verdict came in at 11 a.m. I was on the phone with Capital Grille at 11:15 a.m., and by 11:30 a.m., they agreed to take a party of 30 at noon,” Exxon’s lawyer Tom Melsheimer of King & Spalding told The Texas Lawbook.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2016 by Pedro Ramirez Jr. in the wake of climate change litigation filed by the New York attorney general’s office. Ramirez claimed that Exxon incurred losses at some of its key production assets and misrepresented the status of its reserves of a heavy oil product that is mined in Canada and used in asphalt.
Melsheimer said the case had been delayed due to the related case in New York that had its trial in 2019 and then COVID caused further delays.
“Our key defense really was that the plaintiffs had no documents, no emails, no text messages that showed any intent to defraud — nothing that suggested someone falsified a number or changed any calculation to reach a certain result,” Melsheimer said.
He added that while the case was very high stakes, as Ramirez was seeking roughly $3 billion in damages, Exxon lawyers told the jury what mattered most was the company’s reputation.
According to Melsheimer, jurors who spoke with his team after the verdict said the individual defendants’ testimony was compelling.
“The company’s very proud of its culture of integrity and getting to the right answer, and we put on witness after witness … some who worked for the company, some who didn’t, who had long retired. They all spoke about the same culture,” Melsheimer said.
He said the people who testified had a combined 386 total years of experience at the company. There were about a dozen witnesses total.
In a joint statement issued to The Texas Lawbook, Scott Thomas of Latham & Watkins and Dan Toal, Audra Soloway and Ted Wells of Paul, Weiss, who all represented Exxon along with Melsheimer, said, “We are thrilled with the jury’s verdict, which is a complete vindication of ExxonMobil and its officers. After carefully considering the evidence, the jury rejected plaintiffs’ claims and confirmed what ExxonMobil has maintained from the beginning: its disclosures were accurate, made in good faith, and consistent with the applicable rules. We are grateful to the jury for the time and attention it devoted to this case.”
Joe Kendall of Kendall Law Group, Balon Bradley of Balon B. Bradley Law Firm, Darren Robbins, Jonah Goldstein, Mary Blasy, Michael Dowd, Nathan Lindell, Patrick Coughlin, Sam Sheldon, Samuel Rudman, Sara Polychron, Scott Saham, Spencer Burkholz, Timothy Folkerth and Erika Oliver of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, and John Herman of Herman Jones represented Ramirez. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Daniel Kramer, Gregory Laufer, Lyubov Shamailova, Paul Brachman, and Samuel Kleiner of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, Nina Cortell, Jason Bloom and Jason Jordan of Haynes Boone, Austin Saathoff, David Hinojosa and Emily Wilkinson of King & Spalding, and Ralph Duggins of Cantey Hanger also represented ExxonMobil.
The case number is 3:16-cv-03111.