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Judge Allows Claims Against ExxonMobil for Failure to Address and Adapt to Climate-related Impacts at its Terminal in Mass. to Move Forward

The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), represented by Kanner & Whiteley, successfully defeated ExxonMobil’s second attempt to dismiss the majority of the environmental group’s claims related to the Everett Terminal. On March 13, 2019, Judge Mark Wolf of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that CLF had adequately alleged sufficient facts to state a plausible claim that ExxonMobil was in violation of its Clean Water Act permit due to its failure to consider the impending risks posed by increased precipitation, flooding, storms and storm surges, and committed sea level rise in operating and maintaining its facility and in developing its Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan and other facility response documents. Judge Wolf also found that CLF had adequately alleged that ExxonMobil’s failures to address and adapt to these climate-related impacts have created an imminent and substantial risk to CLF members who live and recreate around the Terminal to exposure to discharges of pollutants from the Terminal, and thus, CLF’s claims under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act could also proceed.

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