“Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve Exxon Mobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change in the production of its fossil fuel products. But Exxon Mobil is in the business of producing energy, and this is a securities fraud case, not a climate change case.”

A New York state judge ruled that ExxonMobil was innocent of misleading investors for years about how it calculated the financial risks of climate change, ending a multi-year legal battle between the nation’s largest energy company and the state. Despite the setback, environmental law experts believe that Exxon’s victory says more about the failure of the specific strategy used in the case than the likelihood of other climate change litigations succeeding.

The state accused Exxon within the narrow confines of the Martin Act, a state anti-fraud law, charging Exxon of misleading investors about the costs climate change pose to its business.

As Citizen Truth has previously reported, the company has a long history of concealing its knowledge about climate change. ExxonMobil’s scientists warned of the danger carbon emissions posed to the planet in the 1980s, but the oil giant’s leadership concealed their findings and sponsored climate denial misinformation campaigns that contradicted their own research for decades.

While the New York lawsuit failed to find Exxon guilty, it produced new information such as the revelation that former CEO Rex Tillerson obscured internal communications concerning the risks of climate change by using the alias “Wayne Tracker.”

In August 2017 two Harvard researchers published a peer-reviewed analysis of 40 years of ExxonMobil’s climate change communications, demonstrating a discrepancy between their public position and the private position discussed between their scientists and executives. The same year, Exxon spent more than $30 million funding think tanks that spread doubt about climate change.

But because of the specific framework of the securities fraud case, the attorney general needed to prove that Exxon had made false statements to shareholders that the investors would have considered important. The judge, Barry Ostrager, ruled that the state failed to provide sufficient evidence that investors would care about Exxon’s deceptions, but emphasized the limitations of his ruling:

“Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve Exxon Mobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change in the production of its fossil fuel products. But Exxon Mobil is in the business of producing energy, and this is a securities fraud case, not a climate change case.”

Other climate change cases showcase a range of legal strategies and theories, such as “public nuisance” cases which reach far beyond the limitations of the securities fraud case as they charge companies for selling products that they know to be harmful to human health and the environment.

“The nuisance cases have the potential to wreak far more havoc on oil companies because the potential for liability reaches into the billions of dollars,” Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA, told the Nation. “And if one or more jurisdictions prevail, we are likely to see many other cities, counties, and states file similar suits to recover damages for climate change impacts that are already occurring and that will occur in the future.”

“The nuisance cases involve oil company knowledge about climate change, deception about that knowledge, and damage caused by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels,” Carlson continued. “The New York case was based on an entirely different theory and set of facts about how to assess climate change risk in valuing oil company investments.”

Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, called the ruling “a narrow decision on a specific claim about a particular set of non-required statements Exxon made a few years ago,” limiting the carry-over it will have in other climate cases with different legal strategies and theories.

“Climate litigation is still in its infancy,” wrote the Nation’s Zoë Carpenter, noting that the scope of the multifaceted climate movement reaches beyond the courts, targeting political and financial institutions as well.

For example, ExxonMobil’s lead lawyer in the New York case, Ted Wells Jr., is a top Democratic donor who also serves as one of the 13 members of the Harvard Corporation, which advises the university’s president on fossil fuel divestment. As the Intercept reported, Harvard student activists have been mobilizing against Wells and strategizing on how to pressure liberal firms that represent fossil fuel companies.

Carpenter notes that the legal battle to hold Big Tobacco accountable spanned over two decades and contained multiple defeats, pointing to the other pending cases against Exxon, as well as the pledges of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to hold fossil fuel executives accountable for environmental damage, as reason for hope in future climate cases.

“If the New York ruling has a broader implication, it is that securities fraud may not be the most effective vehicle for holding fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change—not that it can’t be done,” wrote Carpenter.