Chris White reports:
The Exxon subpoena into the company’s knowledge about internal climate change reports is an abuse of extraordinary powers. It allowed attorneys general (AGs) to subpoena private documents without either obtaining a court order or filing a complaint, Merritt Fox, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, wrote Monday at National Law Journal.
Fox was referencing New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s investigation into Exxon, which, according to a New York Times report, demanded “extensive financial records, emails and other documents” from the oil producer dating all the way back to the 1970s. The New York attorney general also demanded information on global warming skeptic groups Exxon had once helped fund. ...
Yet another legal expert has joined at least 12 others in calling New York Attorney General Eric Schniederman’s investigation of ExxonMobil legally flimsy. This morning, Columbia Law Professor Merritt B. Fox published an op-ed in the National Law Journal with a scathing review of Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate ExxonMobil, noting that the whole affair is an “abuse” of “extraordinary powers.” As Fox states, “The Martin Act grants the attorney general extraordinary powers to subpoena private documents without either obtaining a court order, which is required in most ordinary New York criminal proceedings, or the filing of a complaint, which is required in an ordinary civil action and is subject to court review. The Exxon subpoena is an abuse of these extraordinary powers.” (emphasis added)
