Oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil Corp. filed a countersuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and several environmental groups on Monday, accusing them of colluding on a campaign of defamation against the company’s plastic recycling initiatives.
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, was in response to a separate legal challenge filed by Bonta and four California-based environmental groups, the Sierra Club, San Francisco Baykeeper, Heal the Bay, and the Surfrider Foundation, against Exxon Mobil in September 2024.
In that lawsuit, Bonta and the groups accused Exxon Mobil of “engaging in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.”…