Washington Examiner | Exxon Mobil is asking a federal court to continue its lawsuit against activist shareholders that sought a vote on the company’s climate policy, even after the investors withdrew the resolution at issue, arguing the lawsuit could prevent similar proposals from being considered in the future.
Last month, Exxon Mobil sued investment firm Arjuna Capital and Follow This, a Dutch investor group, to prevent them from filing a climate shareholder proposal that would’ve demanded a vote on the company establishing targets to reduce indirect emissions produced up and down its value chain, otherwise known as Scope 3 emissions.
The lawsuit is a first-time effort by the oil major to exclude shareholders’ proposals through the courts instead of through the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the common route for companies. The legal effort prompted the two investor groups to rescind their shareholder proposal.
But even after the resolution was withdrawn, Exxon maintains the lawsuit is necessary to prevent the investors from simply tweaking the proposal and resubmitting a similar one in the next year, according to a motion filed late Wednesday.
[…]“In refusing to dismiss the case following the withdrawal, Exxon has laid bare its true intention — to challenge how the SEC interprets and applies its own proxy proposal rules, without actually confronting the SEC itself,” the motion reads, which was filed earlier this month.
Follow This founder Mark van Baal stated that Exxon’s legal tactics amounted to “tactics of intimidation and bullying to silence our fair ask to tackle the climate crisis.”
“Shareholders’ rights are under attack,” van Baal told the Financial Times. “[Exxon] may vastly prefer litigation against parties like Arjuna and Follow This,” two groups he says have fewer resources and that “Exxon can unfairly malign in its complaint.”
