Exxon’s $725 million benzene verdict sends a signal for accountability
A jury found the oil major liable for concealing knowledge that led to a mechanic’s cancer diagnosis. Lawyers say it’s part of a bigger story playing out.
Emily Sanders is senior reporter for ExxonKnews.
ExxonMobil must pay $725.5 million in compensatory damages to a former mechanic who attributed his cancer diagnosis to years of benzene exposure from Exxon’s products, a Philadelphia jury has decided.
During a week-long trial, former mechanic Paul Gill told the jury his cancer stemmed from handling benzene-laden gasoline and solvents at the Exxon service station where he worked between 1975 and 1980. For more than half a century, Exxon was aware that benzene could cause cancer — but concealed that knowledge from workers and the public in order to protect its profits, his attorneys argued.
Gill was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer, in 2019. He sued Exxon a year later for deliberately endangering him and “tens of millions of people in the United States of America and in other countries for its own financial benefit,” according to the complaint.
In a 10-2 verdict on Thursday, jurors found Exxon liable for failing to warn about that harm, deeming its “defective products” to be a “substantial contributing factor” in causing Gill’s cancer.
“ExxonMobil has known for decades that benzene causes cancer, yet they resisted warning the public and taking basic precautions to limit exposure,” said Patrick Wigle, an attorney for Gill, in a statement. “We’re grateful that this jury listened closely to the testimony and decided that it’s time to hold corporations like Exxon accountable for placing profits over people.”
Gill’s attorneys have cited evidence that Exxon knew workers handling its products would be endangered by benzene, but that the company neglected to take action because it “knew that disclosure of such knowledge would be detrimental to its corporate image and financial wellbeing.”
For instance, Exxon is and was a member of the American Chemistry Council — then known as the Manufacturing Chemists Association — which in 1960, issued a Chemical Safety Data Sheet with essential information for safe handling and use of benzene. The publication, cited in the complaint, stated that “[t]he principal hazard [of benzene] is from the inhalation of the vapors of benzene… Chronic poisoning results from daily exposure to unsafe concentrations of benzene vapor over a prolonged period of time.”
But according to the complaint, Exxon deliberately did not install vapor recovery systems or provide respirators for use at gasoline service stations because of the suspicion and scrutiny that would prompt from consumers.
According to the National Institutes of Health, there is no safe level of benzene, which is often found in emissions from oil and gas production, posing major public health hazards to communities living along the fencelines of fossil fuel power plants and plastics manufacturing facilities. The toxic chemical is also emitted through the process of “chemical recycling” — a set of technologies touted by the American Chemistry Council and Exxon as a solution to plastic waste, but decried by advocates and experts as a “dangerous deception.”
In a statement to Reuters, an Exxon spokesperson said the jury’s verdict was “irrational” and that the company planned to “exhaust all available appeals” to overturn it.
The company has taken a similar approach to dozens of state, local, and tribal government lawsuits seeking to hold the company accountable for deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels — and the resulting costs to communities now facing worsening climate disasters and impacts.
Exxon has been fighting to move those cases, many of which are also based in state common law, out of state court, where the industry could face evidence of their deception at trial. After having such requests rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, oil company defendants are now waiting on the results of a more recent appeal they filed with the Supreme Court, arguing that the case brought by the city and county of Honolulu is preempted by federal law.
Many of those lawsuits charge Exxon and other oil majors with deception that delayed government climate action for decades, leading to adaptation and recovery expenses amounting to many billions of dollars. “Exxon's worst nightmare is having to face a jury in Maui, or Imperial Beach, or Baltimore, or Charleston, or any of the other communities hard hit by climate change,” said Vermont Law School professor Patrick Parenteau.
Gill’s attorneys even made the comparison in their case, attributing Exxon’s benzene deception to a larger trend.
“This pattern of conduct is consistent with ExxonMobil and Mobil Oil’s general disregard for the rights and safety of others as manifested by its decisions to conceal knowledge of climate changes, its decision to operate refineries and permit pollution in areas populated by underprivileged communities and its decision to explore and transport oil and chemical products in a manner that is detrimental to the environment,” they write.
While cases seeking to recover climate damages will require more complex attribution science, the cases are founded on the same concepts of negligence, concealment, and deceit, Parenteau said. This latest verdict shows that “no one, not even mighty Exxon, can escape the long arm of the law forever,” he said.
“When you put the facts and the law in front of a jury, justice happens.”