Connecticut’s Attorney General William Tong has partnered with an outside law firm backed by international billionaires in his signature court case against oil giant ExxonMobil as he and other attorneys general seek billions in restitution for oil companies’ allegedly deceiving the public on fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change.
San Francisco-based law firm Sher Edling was added to Connecticut’s case against Exxon in May. Sher Edling specializes in environmental cases and is partnered with other states like California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts in their cases against major oil companies seeking an outcome like the 1998 $246 billion settlement with Big Tobacco over their efforts to conceal the health costs of smoking.
The firm founded in 2016, however, is backed by millions of dollars flowing from international billionaires through the New Venture Fund (NVF), a massive nonprofit based out of Washington D.C., that “aims to build a just, equitable and sustainable future by getting the right types of philanthropic capital into the hands of people with the right ideas, at the right times, in the right places to accomplish needed change,” according to their 990 report.
Since the NVF started routing money to Sher Edling in 2021, the nonprofit has sent $10.6 million to the law firm as part of their environmental programs listing in their most recent 2024 tax filing.
With revenue ranging between $600 million and nearly $1 billion per year since 2020, the NVF distributes vast amounts of money – roughly $460 million in grants in 2024 alone – that go to a wide variety of different program areas, including civil rights advocacy, youth development, and environmental programs where NVF shelled out $57.9 million in grants in 2024, according to their annual report.
The NVF was, until 2025, managed by Arabella Advisors, a left-leaning philanthropic consulting company with major domestic and international billionaire donors contributing through their respective foundations, including Bill Gates, George Soros, and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, whose foundation donated more than $27 million to the NVF between 2016 and 2019, according to the New York Times.
Arabella has now been acquired by public benefit corporation Sunflower Services, with the NVF acting as one of the lead investors. Sher Edling has also received donations from another nonprofit giant, the Resources Legacy Fund, another environment-focused organization, which provided the law firm with roughly $1.7 million in support and paid them $2.3 million for consulting services.
The money started flowing to Sher Edling as they began to partner with state attorneys general in litigating against oil companies, which earned them the ire of Republican led congressional committees, including the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the Committee on the Judiciary.
An October 2024 memorandum from Republican staff detailing an investigation into Sher Edling by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, referred to the network of organizations tied to Sher Edling as a left-wing, dark money group that is using its NVF funding to engage in “nuisance lawsuits.”
“Over the past few years, the firm has filed over twenty lawsuits against oil and gas companies, claiming they are liable for billions of dollars in damages from weather-related incidents because they knowingly caused climate change,” the memorandum stated, echoing the allegations made in Connecticut’s lawsuit against Exxon. “Indeed, not only will Sher Edling receive approximately one-third of any amount it extracts from energy companies if it is somehow successful, far-left funds are offsetting any risk the firm would otherwise have in pursuing these absurd claims by bankrolling Sher Edling to the tune of millions of dollars each year.”
In April 2026, the Committee on the Judiciary issued a letter to Sher Edling questioning the firm’s overlapping financial interests, personnel, and funding sources with other climate change organizations like the Environmental Law Institute and the Climate Judiciary Project, which the letter claims are trying to “influence federal judges.”
“This information suggests that the same left-wing dark money group bankrolling climate litigants is also funding the entity predisposing the judges who will decide those cases on the very legal and scientific theories those cases advance,” Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH, wrote in his letter requesting Sher Edling provide documents. “Taken together, this evidence raises questions as to whether, and to what extent, there has been coordination between ELI or CJP and third parties, including your firm, interested in securing favorable judgments in climate-related cases.”
Thus far, according to laments outlined in the 2024 memorandum and the 2026 request for documents, it appears Sher Edling has largely avoided testimony or providing non-public documents and has only answered limited questions sent by the committees.
Reached for comment, OAG Director of Communications Elizabeth Benton said Sher Edling was “secured through a competitive process to support our litigation team as we head to trial,” and that Sher Edling will only receive payment upon a successful outcome. Under Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, Sher Edling would be entitled to seek attorney’s fees from Exxon, “and they will also be entitled to a contingency fee of up to 7 percent, capped at $15 million, if there is a monetary recovery from ExxonMobil.”
“ExxonMobil has one of the most resourced legal, PR and lobbying teams on the planet,” Benton said. “The fossil fuel industry has tried every possible angle to invalidate our case and to delay our progress, in the courts, in Congress, and through the media. We are aggressively prosecuting our case in Connecticut.”
Attorney General William Tong announced the lawsuit against ExxonMobil in September of 2020, along with several other states, in a coordinated effort to litigate their claims against oil companies in state courts under their respective unfair trade practice laws after previous similar lawsuits had failed after reaching the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.
Tong, along with numerous other attorneys general, claims that oil companies misled the public on the effect their product would have on the climate and should therefore be financially responsible for the damages caused by climate change.
Connecticut, along with several other states including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have had some success keeping their respective cases out of the federal court system and in the state court system following a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to review Boulder v. Suncor Energy, another climate lawsuit, thus keeping the case in Colorado Superior Court. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals followed suit, and Connecticut’s case is being heard in Connecticut Superior Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court also rejected a petition by 19 Republican attorneys general seeking to block these cases, and in November of 2025, the Connecticut Superior Court Judge John B. Farley denied Exxon’s motion to strike Connecticut’s lawsuit in a decision Tong called a “complete victory.”
Connecticut’s Office of the Attorney General has previously employed personnel funded by billionaires through nonprofit organizations.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg created the State Environmental & Impact Center in 2017 with a $6.1 million donation and began loaning out attorneys to assist attorneys general in bringing climate lawsuits against oil companies. Connecticut was supplied with two attorneys from the Impact Center, including Benjamin Cheney, who is now working on the Exxon case.
Although the state cases are continuing, at least one billionaire-backed foundation has pulled back on some climate-related funding. Bill Gates in 2025 announced in an essay that he no longer believed climate alarmism was working and wanted to make human welfare the focus of their climate strategies.
The pullback had trickle down effects, resulting in the closing of the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs, a small nonprofit backed by labor unions.
According to their 2024 990 report, NVF sent $7.9 million to various Connecticut nonprofits in 2024, with the bulk of the funding coming from a $7.7 million grant to the Manresa Island Corp in Norwalk, a nonprofit trying to reopen Manresa Island, a former industrial site, to the public. The rest of the money went to A Better Way Foundation in New Haven and the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector in West Hartford.
“ExxonMobil amassed billions of dollars in profits off a decades-long campaign of lies about the climate impacts of its fossil fuel business and products, and Connecticut is holding them accountable,” Benton said.
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