A federal judge in Puerto Rico sanctioned the lawyer representing the City of San Juan in a climate lawsuit for “an astonishing example of plagiarism” by copying entire passages from legal filings by other municipalities on the island in their own climate cases.
Some 40 cities filed a class action against Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other oil companies in 2022, seeking climate change-related damages. A year later, “for unknown reasons,” San Juan hired local personal-injury attorney David Efron to file the city’s own climate suit, wrote U.S. District Judge Aida M. Delgado-Colon in an April 9 order proposing $7,000 in sanctions.
The San Juan lawsuit “is almost a word-for-word carbon copy” of the class action, which was drafted by lawyers at Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman and Smouse & Mason, the judge said. Not only does it contain the same spelling errors but at least once Efron left in a reference to “this class action,” when he represents a single plaintiff.
“Evidently, San Juan’s complaint is a poorly plagiarized version of the complaint in the Municipalities’ Case,” the judge wrote.
Defendants found evidence of similar copying in other filings totaling more than 400 pages, the judge wrote. “As in law school, passing someone else’s work off as one’s own is wrong as a matter of fact and professional ethics,” Judge Delgado-Colon said. This isn’t a case of using a “template or standard form document,” the judge said.
“The misconduct is taking another lawyer’s work for a different client, filing it verbatim in this case — apparently without due review or regard for the client’s specific circumstances,” the judge said. The apparent plagiarism raises concerns under Rule 11 – the rule of procedure requiring attorneys to fully investigate claims before putting them in a lawsuit – the judge said.