Exposed: Chevron Says Lawyers Shaped ‘Independent’ Climate-Attribution Studies

In the latest twist in Multnomah County’s climate lawsuit, Chevron has filed a motion that peels back the curtain on how plaintiffs’ lawyers and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) are trying to shape the very evidence they use in court. [emphasis, links added]

The filing reveals that the ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project, which is currently under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, has ties to Roger Worthington, an attorney representing Multnomah County.

Moreover, the filing claims that both Worthington and ELI were involved in crafting an attribution science study cited by Dr. Ben Franta on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Amidst this new evidence, Chevron Oil Company has requested the court disregard the tainted study and hear oral arguments to investigate the full extent of additional influence over “neutrally presented materials.”

A Pattern Of Unethical Behavior

This isn’t the first time Worthington has hidden his involvement in ginning up support for a case he himself is litigating.

According to the filing:

“Plaintiff’s counsel’s failure to disclose his involvement with the two Nature studies cited by Plaintiff and its experts does not appear to be an isolated instance, but part of a broader pattern confirming the lack of disclosure is intentional.” (emphasis added)

In June, Worthington published an opinion article where he voiced support for Multnomah County’s lawsuit, but he never disclosed that he remains lead counsel in the case. When the article was originally published, it only mentioned that he was the owner of two local breweries.

According to the filing, even after a reader raised questions about the lack of disclosure, Worthington failed to fully disclose his involvement in the case.

The new disclosure said that Worthington is no longer involved in the case and that he wrote it as a “private citizen.”

However, according to Chevron’s filing and court records, Worthington continues to represent the plaintiffs under a contingency-fee contract, meaning he would clearly financially benefit from the outcome of the case.

Worthington’s Ties To Academics, Researchers Supporting Climate Cases

As detailed in the filing, the Worthington & Caron LLP website links to a draft “module” used by the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) to train judges about climate science.

Chevron raised concerns about the connection between Worthington’s firm and CJP:

“That Plaintiff’s law firm has access to and the apparent potential to influence a prepublication version of this module—a module that purports to address important issues in this case (and the broader climate litigation space) such as causation and event attribution—raises significant questions as to whether the law firm is engaged in an effort to prejudice the courts more broadly in its client’s and litigation allies’ favor.”

In addition, the law firm’s website links to two unpublished drafts of an April 2025 attribution science study published in Nature by Dartmouth researchers.

The first unpublished draft is from 2022, and the second from 2023 – both clearly watermarked as draft copies, not for distribution. How and why Worthington & Caron had access to these early drafts remains an open question.

Stranger still, the linked 2023 draft acknowledges that ELI’s CJP helped fund the Dartmouth study – a detail which was mysteriously absent from the final, published version.

The final, published study was cited by the Multnomah plaintiffs in an expert report prepared by none other than Dr. Ben Franta, friend of Sher Edling LLP – a report that Chevron is now asking the court to exclude based on new facts.

Despite a mountain of evidence that CJP supports plaintiff-friendly applications of attribution science in the courtroom, CJP has repeatedly claimed to be a “neutral” forum.

When the House Judiciary Committee announced a probe into ELI’s judicial education program last month, ELI said:

“CJP does not participate in litigation, provide support for or coordinate with any parties in litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule on any issue or in any case.”

It’s now clear that Worthington & Caron had advance knowledge of CJP’s judicial education modules, and advance notice of the Dartmouth paper. CJP has some explaining to do.

A Science Designed To Bolster Climate Litigation

This news follows a broader trend of activist groups, academic allies, and trial lawyers working in tandem to produce “independent” evidence that is, in fact, tailor-made for climate lawsuits.

It has been well documented that climate-attribution research was created solely to bolster climate lawsuits.

For example, the Carbon Majors database, which is frequently used in climate-attribution studies, was explicitly created to support efforts “to hold oil, gas, and coal companies morally, financially, and legally responsible for exacerbating foreseeable climate damages.”

As an E&E News article about another leading climate-attribution researcher explains:

“But Friederike Otto, a climate expert at the University of Oxford who has worked with [Myles] Allen, said her efforts to link extreme weather events to climate change have always been tied to the possibility of legal action. ‘Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind,’ she said.” (emphasis added)

Despite a fancy university affiliation, it appears that the Dartmouth study is no different.

Bottom Line: Worthington’s failure to disclose his involvement in developing the evidence that he’s using in court is part of a growing effort to develop climate-attribution science designed specifically to support climate lawsuits.

But in reality, the coordinated and billionaire-funded climate-litigation campaign is far from impartial and instead, supported by an echo chamber of activists, lawyers, and academics, often with personal stakes in the lawsuits.

Read more at EID Climate