A federal district court in Massachusetts remanded Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil back to state court today after a hearing over the proper jurisdiction for the case. The move reinforced the parallels between Massachusetts’ case and the lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general against ExxonMobil, which failed in court last year.

The Massachusetts attorney general’s office argued in the hearing before Judge William Young today that their case is not about climate change. Instead, the attorney general’s office argued, this case is about whether ExxonMobil was truthful in its statements to consumer and investors:

“This is really not a case about carbon emissions, it’s not a case about any kind of pollution abatement, it is not a case about national treaties, and it doesn’t implicate any federal scheme, Your Honor. It’s a case about making sure we have accurate statements about the products and securities that ExxonMobil sells in the Commonwealth to its consumers and to its investors.”

That’s great news for ExxonMobil, because the truthfulness of their statements has already been thoroughly investigated, litigated, and deemed beyond reproach. Recall that the New York attorney general investigated this very issue for four years, reviewing millions of pages of documents, only to suffer a spectacularly embarrassing defeat in state court at the end of last year.

The New York attorney general even had the benefit of a more powerful securities law than Healey’s, and still came up empty-handed.

New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager, who ruled against the New York attorney general last fall, even made several statements specifically attesting to the truthfulness and integrity of ExxonMobil’s statements to its investors:

“In sum, the Office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor…”

“What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible. More than half of the current and former ExxonMobil executives and employees who testified at trial have worked for ExxonMobil for the entirety of their careers. The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting. The Court heard testimony from ten present and former ExxonMobil employees, most of whom were called by the Office of the Attorney General as adverse witnesses. There was not a single ExxonMobil employee whose testimony the Court found to be anything other than truthful.” (emphasis added)

Some may say Attorney General Healey scored a victory today, but if history is any indication, her case is unlikely to pan out as her supporters hope.