of dollars in damages and misled the public by minimizing the risks from fossil fuels, The New York Times reported.
The civil case was filed in superior court in San Francisco against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, which is headquartered in California. The American Petroleum Institute, anindustry group, is also a defendant in the case, The New York Times said. “Oil and gas company executives have known for decades that reliance on fossil fuels would cause these catastrophic results, but they suppressed that information from the public and policymakers by actively pushing out disinformation on the topic,” the 135-page complaint reads, according to the Times.
Since the current wave of environmental litigation against fossil fuel firms began around 2017, the industry has sought to avoid state trials on procedural grounds.