Multnomah County is hoping to extract $51 billion from oil and gas companies it blames for a heat wave event in 2021, which was associated with over 100 deaths. The lawsuit it filed in 2023 against the companies was potentially undermined after the court learned the Oregon county failed to disclose that the plaintiff’s lead attorney, Roger Worthington, was involved in studies submitted in support of the county’s case.  

The revelations of Worthington’s involvement came out when Chevron, one of the companies targeted by the lawsuit, filed a motion to have the studies stricken from the record. The court denied the request but not without sternly criticizing the county for failing to disclose the relationship. 

During the hearing, the county denied that the researchers who published the studies had consulted with Worthington, as Chevron is alleging, beyond providing partial funding. However, emails obtained by the government transparency advocacy nonprofit Government Accountability & Oversight show that he did consult with the researchers on a 2024 study he also partially funded.

Watchdog: "Behind-the-scenes collusion"

The study, which wasn’t submitted in the Oregon case, discloses in the acknowledgments that Worthington partially funded the research. But the acknowledgments don’t mention that he’s counsel for plaintiffs in a lawsuit and stands to benefit from a settlement, nor does it mention he was consulted in the development of the research. 

The study was updated this year, and climate celebrity Micheal Mann was added as a co-author. 

The Multnomah lawsuit is one of dozens filed by local governments hoping for billion-dollar settlements they claim they’re owed as a result of climate change. Opponents of the litigation campaign say that an attorney involved in climate research while representing a plaintiff in a climate lawsuit is reflective of a vast pattern in which anti-fossil fuel activists use judicial training, media and scientific research to win favor for the plaintiffs in the cases. 

Matthew Hardin, board member at watchdog Government Accountability & Oversight, told Just the News that Worthington’s involvement in research demonstrates that the problem is worse than GAO thought. 

“The full extent of the behind-the-scenes collusion continues to dribble out. Academics were allowing their benefactor, a trial lawyer, input into their work, seemingly to make sure they presented their work in the way most useful to the litigation seeking a multibillion-dollar windfall,” Hardin alleged. 

Planet "on the brink" anti-fossil fuel advocates say

The emails GAO obtained show the lead author of “The 2024 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink,” which acknowledges that Worthington partially funded, consulted with the attorney. The paper was published in the scientific journal BioScience, and it concludes that failure to address climate change by eliminating fossil fuel use, which provided nearly 87% of global energy consumption in 2024, is producing a cataclysmic crisis for the planet. 

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis,” the authors warn. 

Such advocacy-oriented language is used throughout the paper, and it also contradicts mainstream climate science. A recent study by the Department of Energy explains that under the various emission scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a U.N. consortium of the world’s leading climate scientists — there exists no scenario in which the “fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.” 

Under all five scenarios — called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways — including one in which nothing is done to abate emissions, people are much wealthier in 2100 than they are today. 

Emails show possible collusion

In September, the GAO submitted a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to Oregon State University asking for electronic correspondence containing certain terms or addressed to certain people, including Worthington. 

Dr. William Ripple, who is the lead author of the BioScience study, sent multiple emails to Worthington. 

In an email from Aug. 13, 2024, Ripple tells Worthington, “We have now finished the 2024 State of the Climate Report and have put in numbers on CO2 emissions as you requested last year. We hope to publish by October.”

The email appears to be a followup to an email the previous April in which Ripple tells Worthington, “I like your suggestion for us to put some CO2 emissions numbers into our 2024 State of the Climate Report which will be published in the fall of 2024. See attached draft for these numbers. The pie chart would go into the supplement.” 

On August 22, 2024, Ripple sent a proof of the study to Worthington and said, “Please let me know if you have any issues on how I mention you in the acknowledgements section as providing partial funding for this work. Cheers and thanks so much for your ongoing support.” 

Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told Just the News that judges and the public deserve full disclosure when advocacy is masquerading as neutral science. This is especially important when that research is being used to reshape law and policy through the courts, he said. 

“The pattern that continues to emerge is deeply troubling. What is being presented to courts as independent, peer-reviewed climate research increasingly appears to be coordinated with, funded by, or influenced by the very attorneys advancing these lawsuits,” Isaac said. 

Activists providing judicial training

In its motion in the Multnomah case, Chevron points out that an early draft of a peer-reviewed paper the county submitted in support of its case appeared on the law firm of Worthington & Caron, which Worthington owns. The link to the draft is now broken, but the draft remains on an internet archive site. 

The draft version of "Carbon Majors" acknowledges that the Environmental Law Institute's Climate Science in Judicial Education provided funding for the article, but mention of ELI funding is absent from the published version. While ELI claims to provide judges in its training with neutral education, it has come under scrutiny for allegedly biasing judges in favor of the plaintiffs in climate litigation. 

The acknowledgments of the published study list three ELI-linked judges, including Judge Travis Laster, vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Fox News reported last summer on 2022 emails from Laster to five other judges in the ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project. In the email exchange, Laster shared a YouTube video that contains information about trends in floods and sea levels that depart from IPCC science on the topics. 

In the email, Laster asked others not to share the link to the video, saying that “the powers that be will be happier that I said" not to share it. 

Transparency, ethics and judicial impartiality

The acknowledgments of the “Carbon Majors” paper also list Judge Jeremy Fogel, ELI board member. Fogel was on the advisory committee that helped develop the curriculum for the Climate Judiciary Project. None of the modules in the curriculum include research from climate scientists who dispute the “climate crisis” conclusions, such as those who authored the DOE report. 

Judge Charles Cunningham, Jr. a retired Kentucky Circuit Court judge, is also listed in the paper’s acknowledgments. Cunningham, according to his resume, was also a participant in ELI’s climate program in 2022. 

“When draft studies acknowledging ties to the Environmental Law Institute appear on a plaintiff attorney’s website, only for those disclosures to disappear in final publications, it raises serious questions about transparency, ethics and judicial impartiality,” Isaac said. 

The American Energy Institute this year updated their report finding that climate activists are using the climate litigation campaign to enact Green New Deal policies through the court system — policies that would never pass through Congress or state legislatures. The report also argues that the Climate Judiciary Project is coordinated by academics and judges sympathetic to the plaintiffs in climate cases. 

In September, the American Energy Institute sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, asking him to investigate how ELI and Worthington may be shaping outcomes in climate lawsuits. 

Hardin, with the GAO, also said the campaign deserves further Congressional attention, as any settlements in these cases would ultimately be paid by energy consumers. Since energy from fossil fuels is used in almost every product produced, that would mean everyone.  

“This is nothing short of racketeering. I expect Congress will want to expand its investigations into the scheme to whether the trial bar is colluding to manufacture a narrative to put billions of dollars in their pockets at the cost of the American economy and consumer,” Hardin said. 

Going against guidelines

Another email the GAO obtained shows an executive of Artemis Independent, a media promotions company, raising concerns about Worthington appearing in and funding “The Scientist’s Warning,” which Artemis was considering promoting at the time, and is hosted online by Oregon State University.

The executive explains in the emails that public television guidelines won’t allow funders in the content of the film. Since Worthington funds two entities that fund the film — one is the Alliance of World Scientists and the other is redacted — it goes against those guidelines, the executive explains. 

Ripple emailed David Baker, who was then-director of Oregon State Productions, to ask how to respond to the executive’s questions. 

The response isn’t included in the emails GAO obtained. 

Just the News tried to contact Worthington through Worthington & Caron’s website, as well as his personal social media page. Just the News also reached out to Ripple and Chistopher Wolf, who co-authored the “State of the Climate” paper, to ask the researchers if they felt the scientific integrity of their work was compromised by accepting funding from and consulting with an attorney involved in climate litigation. 

None of the people contacted responded to Just the News’ questions. 

Forum-in-waiting

Chris Horner, an environmental law and energy policy attorney, told Just the News that activists pursuing the litigation campaign against energy companies are trying to create a “forum-in-waiting” for all these lawsuits, should they go to trial.

“They've left nothing to chance, from having academics who would soon be go-to sources for the media to comment on the litigation (without disclosing they were in on it from before the beginning), to softening up the judicial and jury pools,” Horner said. 

Besides providing training to judges that excludes any scientific material that disputes conclusions helpful to the plaintiffs, anti-fossil fuel activist groups fund media outlets such as the Associated Press, which received $8 million from climate advocacy groups in 2022 directly in support of its climate and energy reporting from these groups. 

“The litigation industry underwriters are targeting the jury pool through the media. Of course, judges read the paper and watch TV, and are subject to pressure campaigns like the rest of the public. They've engineered a compliance that goes far beyond the default, fellow-traveler sympathy — the media has been not just willingly captured, but occupied,” Horner said. 

Kevin Killough is the energy reporter for Just The News. You can follow him on X for more coverage.