Almost a Hollywood Plot

I usually write about foreign policy, international relations, wars, conflicts, and the global economy. Domestic legal disputes rarely make it onto my radar. This one did. A colleague mentioned it in passing - his client had asked for an analytical review of a rather impressive stack of documents tied to this case. Curiosity did the rest. I spent two solid hours digging into it. Here goes.

In the United States, a courtroom drama is unfolding that could easily pass for a film script. It began in 2024, when California Attorney General Rob Bonta decided to sue ExxonMobil. The accusation sounds almost simple: the company did not keep its word.

According to the prosecutor’s office, ExxonMobil encouraged consumers to buy plastic products while promoting the idea that those materials would be safely and fully recycled. The numbers cited by the state tell a different story. In 2021, only about 5 percent of plastic waste was actually recycled. The rest followed a more familiar path - into landfills, oceans, and statistics.

ExxonMobil, unsurprisingly, did not respond with an apology. The company’s legal team countered that California authorities were fully aware that the state lacked an effective large-scale recycling infrastructure. They argue that officials understood the structural limitations and yet failed to correct them. In other words, the problem was systemic long before it became litigious.

The story took a sharper turn when a federal judge in Texas ruled that ExxonMobil may proceed with a defamation claim against the California Attorney General. The accuser now faces the possibility of becoming a defendant.

A corporation versus a state. Environmental politics versus industrial reality. Public messaging versus administrative capacity.

The trial will decide more than a dispute over plastic. It will test how far accountability extends when public policy, corporate conduct, and environmental expectations collide.

So who do you root for - the state or the corporation?

Or perhaps both?