Herb, Ep 3: The Next Citizens United Will Be a Climate Case

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In more than 30 climate cases making their way through U.S. courts today, oil companies are using an argument they've been laying the legal groundwork for since the 1970s: that since everything they've ever said about climate change was in the interest of shaping policy or blocking regulation, it's protected speech, even if it was misleading. In this episode we take a look at how those cases are playing out and the likelihood that this new take on "corporate free speech" could make it all the way to the Supreme Court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We'll move on to our third argument for today that is City and County of
0:06.3	Honolulu versus Sonoco LP. Case number is 21-15313 and 21-15318 and Mr.
0:18.0	Boutros. You're up. Thank you, honor. May I please the court? Theodore
0:23.5	Boutros, on behalf of the defendant, said like to reserve three minutes for the
0:26.3	battle. These cases belong in federal court. Whenever you're ready. Thank
0:33.4	you, Your Honor. May I please the court? My name is Justin Anderson. I
0:36.5	represent ExxonMobil in this appeal. You're saying the Attorney General is
0:43.9	punishing us for stating our position on global warming. Right? And so you have
0:50.8	a defense, right? The government is punishing us for speech. That's the first
0:57.2	amendment. You have in the Constitution a defense. Why would the legislature
1:03.8	need to provide you the anti-slap statute to supplement that defense? The
1:09.0	anti-slap statute provides a mechanism to have a case that is brought against
1:14.0	someone for petitioning activity dismissed at the outset before burdensome
1:18.7	discovery is imposed on the party before we have our executives come in to give
1:23.5	testimony and depositions before we're dragged into a courtroom where we have to
1:27.4	defend ourselves. All of this happened. This might sound like boring
1:30.6	droning court tape. Okay, fine. It is boring, droning court tape. But also, there
1:36.4	is a lot going on here, especially in the context of this whole corporate free
1:41.2	speech thing. We've been tracing throughout this mini-series. So let's get into
1:46.5	it. That was Gibson Dunn partner Ted Boutros up top speaking on behalf of his
1:52.0	client Chevron and all of the other oil and gas company defendants in the
1:56.7	climate case that the city and county of Honolulu brought against them. The second
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -563 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Critical Frequency, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Critical Frequency and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.