Platkin v. Exxon Mobil Corp.

The federal district court for the District of New Jersey granted the motion by the New Jersey Attorney General, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the Acting Director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs to remand to state court their lawsuit asserting claims against fossil fuel industry defendants for allegedly misrepresenting their products’ effects on the climate. The court noted that the defendants no longer contested remand due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of petitions for writ of certiorari seeking review of decisions upholding remand orders in other cases. The district court further found that remand was “clearly warranted” in this case because the Third Circuit’s decision affirming remand orders in Hoboken’s and Delaware’s cases “fatally forecloses” each of the defendants’ jurisdictional arguments (complete preemption, Grable jurisdiction, jurisdiction under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, federal officer removal jurisdiction, and federal enclave jurisdiction, although the court noted that the Third Circuit had not addressed the federal enclave jurisdiction argument but that four other circuit courts of appeal had uniformly rejected it). The court denied the plaintiffs’ request for attorneys’ fees incurred as a result of removal, noting that the defendants “consistently and candidly acknowledged” that the Third Circuit’s decision foreclosed their jurisdictional arguments and that they “correctly pointed out” that they would have been precluded from seeking removal had they waited for the Supreme Court to rule on the certiorari petitions. The court found that the defendants “offered colorable reasons to believe that the Supreme Court would at least consider, if not overturn, the existing precedent” and that the plaintiffs offered “little evidence that this brief detour to federal court prejudiced them.”

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