In re Exxon Mobil Corp.

The Texas Supreme Court denied Exxon Mobil Corporation’s petition for review of an intermediate appellate court’s decision that held that Texas courts did not have personal jurisdiction over California municipalities and municipal officials and an attorney who originally represented San Francisco and Oakland in their climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. Exxon sought pre-suit discovery against these parties to determine whether the lawsuits were brought “to suppress the Texas energy sector’s Texas-based speech and associational activities regarding climate change and to gain access to documents that Exxon keeps in Texas.” The lower appellate court found that the parties lacked the requisite minimum contacts with Texas to be subject to personal jurisdiction.

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Reversing a trial court, the Texas Court of Appeals dismissed Exxon Mobil Corporation’s (Exxon’s) petition seeking presuit discovery against California cities and counties that had filed tort-based lawsuits in California courts seeking to hold Exxon and other fossil fuel companies liable for the impacts of climate change. Exxon—which also sought discovery from government officials and an outside attorney who represented two of the cities—contended that the counties’ and cities’ allegations in their lawsuits regarding climate change risks contradicted their bond-offering disclosures and that discovery would allow Exxon to determine whether the California suits were “baseless and brought in bad faith as a pretext to suppress the Texas energy sector’s Texas-based speech and associational activities regarding climate change and to gain access to documents that Exxon keeps in Texas.” The appellate court found that the potential defendants lacked “the requisite minimum contacts with Texas to be subject to personal jurisdiction here.” The appellate court stated that “even though the California suits and some of the Potential Defendants' public comments target Exxon's climate-change speech, these out-of-state actions were directed at Exxon, not Texas. Without more, the mere fact that the Potential Defendants directed these statements at Texas-based Exxon and that Exxon might suffer injury here does not establish personal jurisdiction.” In addition, the appellate court said the filing of lawsuits that could yield production of documents located in Texas was not sufficient to subject the potential defendants to personal jurisdiction in Texas. The appellate court further concluded that a Texas court could not order depositions from prospective witnesses when it did not have personal jurisdiction over the potential defendants. In the opinion’s closing paragraphs, the appellate court said it would “confess to an impulse to safeguard an industry that is vital to Texas’s economic well-being,” but that “our reading of the law simply does not permit us to agree” that the potential defendants had the requisite contacts for jurisdiction. In a similar vein, the chief justice of the court wrote a short concurring opinion urging the Texas Supreme Court “to reconsider the minimum-contacts standard that binds us.”

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A Texas court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law in which the court concluded that it would have personal jurisdiction over potential defendants in a lawsuit contemplated by Exxon Mobil Corporation against parties who participated in planning California local governments' lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. The court concluded that Exxon's potential claims of First Amendment violations, abuse of process, and civil conspiracy would arise from the potential defendants' contact with Texas and that exercising jurisdiction over the defendants "would comport with traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice." In addition, the court said Texas had "a substantial state interest in adjudicating claims concerning constitutional torts committed in Texas against residents."

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