Exxon’s Trial Witness Knocks N.Y.’s ‘Circular’ Losses Claim (1)

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s expert witness -- a Harvard Law School professor -- challenged New York’s claim in a securities-fraud trial that investors lost as much as $1.6 billion when an alleged climate-change cover-up was exposed, calling the argument “a tad circular.”

Allen Ferrell, who’s also a senior consultant at Compass Lexecon, said it was somewhat convenient for an authority to cite its own investigation as the cause of a company’s losses.

“You don’t shoot the arrow and then draw a bulls-eye around it,” Ferrell, expected to be the last witness in the three-week trial, said under questioning from ...