Kobach seeks to dismiss Ford County demand on “fraud and deception” about recycling

Attorney General of Kansas Kris Kobach at a press conference at the Statehouse in Topeka last year. Kobach is trying to intervene in the demand of Ford County against the main plastics manufacturers. (Sherman Smith/Kansas reflector)

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach hopes to intervene in a lawsuit that accuses the main plastic manufacturers of participating in a “fraud campaign and deception of decades” about the viability of recycling.

A group of American residents who bought plastic products, along with officials in Ford County, Kansas, filed the demand in December. The demand names Exxonmobil, Chevron, other plastics manufacturers and a group of industry as defendants.

“Plastic pollution is one of the most serious environmental crises facing the world today,” says a one -one complaint filed last month by the plaintiffs.

But Kobach’s office argued in a motion to intervene, presented earlier this week, that the county is trying to usurp the authority of the attorney general. Kobach asked to intervene in order to present a motion to dismiss the claims of the Ford County.

While Kobach’s presentation focuses on the county, the authority has the authority to present his case, he was solved with the underlying accusations of the lawsuit in a press release issued Wednesday.

“Left environmentalist lawyers have kidnapped Ford County and are using the county to boost a radical and anti-competition agenda,” Kobach said. “If this abuse is allowed to stand up, then any county in the United States could launch any number of attacks to paralyze US energy production.”

The lawyers of the plaintiffs did not immediately respond a request for comments.

Ford County initially demanded Exxonmobil, Chevron and others last year In the United States District Court for the Kansas district, claiming that plastics manufacturers and industry promoters lied to the recyclability of plastic, which resulted in a waste crisis.

The original case was dismissed and a similar case presented in the United States District Court for the West District of Missouri with Ford County and individual plaintiffs.

The complaint seeks damage and a court order to prohibit companies from announcing plastic products as recyclable. He says that between 1950 and 2015, more than 90% of the plastics were “landfills, incinerated or filtered in the environment.”

“Plastic waste is omnipresent, from our rivers, lakes and oceans to roads and coasts,” says the demand.

While manufacturers knew that recycling was “neither technical nor economically viable,” says the demand, “participated in fraudulent marketing and deceptive public education campaigns” to promote it as a solution to plastic waste.

Companies have successfully protected their plastic production and stagnate government efforts to address plastic waste, says the demand.

“The fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies have used the false promise of plastic recycling to exponentially increase virgin plastic production in the last six decades, creating and perpetuating the global crisis of plastic waste and imposing significant costs in the communities that remain for Pay the consequences, “the complaint says.

The demand says that the plaintiffs seek to hold plastic producers when the government has failed and calls the problems described in the complaint “a national crisis” that requires a solution of 50 states “to eliminate their national scheme.”

But Kobach’s motion states that Ford County lacks the legal authority to represent the states and their political subdivisions.

“Ford County, an entity created by Kansas with limited authority, is fundamentally undermining Kansas’s sovereignty in this action,” says the motion. “Kansas currently does not have enough credible information to evaluate the underlying statements of the Ford County and determine if a state (legitimate) demand is needed in everything there are such statements.”

Kobach’s presentation says that the State would try to dismiss the complaint of the Ford Keep producers and plastics manufacturers.

Chevron’s lawyer, Theodore Boutrous, Jr., from Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, said in a statement that the lawsuit “It does not include a single accusation of irregularities by Chevron. “

“From the face of the complaint, it is evident that there is no basis for Chevron to be in this unfounded demand,” said Boutrous.

Ross Eisenberg, president of the United States plastic manufacturers, who is affiliated with American Chemistry Council, said the complaint includes statements that “they are inaccurate, deceitful and outdated.”