Dark Money Group Backed by DiCaprio's Foundation Funded Law Firm Suing Oil Companies, Media Says

The Resources Legacy Fund reportedly provided several million dollars to Sher Edling so the latter would “pursue charitable activities to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the accuracy of information they had disseminated to consumers and the public about the role their products played in causing climate change."

A dark money group called the Resources Legacy Fund (RLF) that was awarded grant money by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation provided funds to a law firm linked to “climate nuisance lawsuits” across the United States, Fox News reports, citing findings made by the watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO).

According to the media outlet, GAO managed to obtain emails that were exchanged between major philanthropist Dan Emmett and Ann Carlson, a climate professor at UCLA, in 2017 when they were working with a law firm called Sher Edling to raise money for the firm’s efforts to sue oil companies on behalf of state and local governments.

In their correspondence, Emmett and Carlson mention how Sher Edling’s director of strategic client relationships Chuck Savitt received help from Terry Tamminen in the latter’s capacity (at the time) as CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

"Chuck Savitt who is heading this new organization behind the lawsuits has been seeking our support," Emmett wrote in one of the emails to Carlson. "Terry Tamminen in his new role with the DiCaprio Foundation has been a key supporter.”

He also forwarded a message to Carlson that Savitt had sent him a few days prior.

"Wanted to let you know that we filed the first three lawsuits supported by the Collective Action Fund on Monday," Savitt wrote in the missive. "These precedent setting cases call on 37 of the world's leading fossil fuel companies to take responsibility for the devastating damage sea level rise - caused by their greenhouse gas emissions - is having on coastal communities."

As the media outlet points out, the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience and Adaptation was managed at the time by the RLF, and two months before the aforementioned correspondence was exchanged, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation announced that they would contribute some $20 million in grants to various climate and conservation causes, with one of the recipients of those grants being the RLF.

The said grant was awarded to the dark money group "to support precedent-setting legal actions to hold major corporations in the fossil fuel industry liable," Fox notes, adding that the announcement has since been deleted (although it remains archived).

Between 2017 and 2020, the RLF reportedly provided more than $5.2 million to Sher Edling, with the dark money group’s spokesman Mark Kleinman telling Fox that they had provided grants to the firm so the latter would “pursue charitable activities to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the accuracy of information they had disseminated to consumers and the public about the role their products played in causing climate change."

Since 2017, Sher Edling has sued major oil companies on behalf of both state and local governments in the United States, alleging that the said companies have "deceived the public about climate change," with most of these lawsuits currently being ongoing, the media outlet adds.