City of San Francisco v. Exxon Mobil Corp.

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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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In July, California cities and counties, local officials, and an outside attorney filed briefs in their appeals of a Texas state court determination that it had personal jurisdiction over the appellants in a proceeding initiated by Exxon Mobil Corporation (Exxon) to pursue pre-suit discovery. The appellants are plaintiffs (and officials and attorneys for the plaintiffs) in lawsuits seeking to hold Exxon and other fossil fuel companies liable for the companies’ contributions to climate change. Exxon sought to conduct depositions and obtain documents relating to potential claims of abuse of process, civil conspiracy, and violations of Exxon’s constitutional rights in connection with “abusive law enforcement tactics and litigation in California” that were “attempting to stifle ExxonMobil’s exercise, in Texas, of its First Amendment right to participate in the national dialogue about climate change and climate policy.” The appellants argued that there were no acts or contacts that could form a basis for a Texas state court to have personal jurisdiction over the appellants in its potential lawsuit.

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