ExxonMobil is suing to recover a document it accidentally gave to attorneys of plaintiffs who are battling the oil company in court over environmental-related injuries. ExxonMobil wants the information returned because it supposedly contains evidence that the corporation deliberately withheld air sample data.

 

Over the past decade, ExxonMobil has been sued by thousands of people who claim that they or deceased members of their family were harmed by exposure to radioactive materials that accumulated in pipes used in the production of oil. In March 2010, a jury in New Orleans ruled that 16 former employees of Intracoastal Tubular Services (ITCO) who had cleaned the pipes without being warned they were dangerous deserved compensation for increased risk of cancer. Exxon had previously been forced to compensate the owners of the property where the pipes were cleaned. One of the property owners happened to be a retired state judge, Joseph Grefer. When the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld that judgment, the justices called Exxon’s behavior “reprehensible.”

 

On August 28, 2008, Exxon inadvertently turned over a 1988 memorandum from Exxon attorney Rosemary Stein regarding the results of air sample tests performed by an ExxonMobil industrial hygienist on an experimental pipe cleaning unit. The oil giant is trying to stop the document from being used in a punitive damage claims trial due to commence on March 5.

 

The attorneys being sued after refusing to return the paperwork are Timothy Falcon and Jeremiah Sprague of the Falcon Law Firm, and attorney Frank M. Buck Jr. The Falcon firm was the one that received the information by mistake, and then shared it with Buck.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Exxon Tries to Cram Genie Back into Bottle (by Sabrina Canfield, Courthouse News Service)

Exxon Mobil v. Timothy Falcon et al. (U.S. District Court, Eastern Louisiana) (pdf)

Lester V. Exxon Mobil Corporation USA (Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fifth Circuit)