Oil and gas companies are asking the Supreme Court to block dozens of high-profile lawsuits from California to Massachusetts that seek to hold the industry liable for billions of dollars in costs related to climate change.
They are urging the justices to step in now and rule that climate change is a global phenomenon and a matter of federal law, not suitable for state-by-state claims.
“The stakes could not be higher,” the companies said in an appeal that will be filed in court on Thursday. “More than two dozen cases have been filed by various states and municipalities across the country seeking to impose untold damages on energy companies…and attempting to assert control over the nation's energy policies…This court should put end to this. “
The climate change lawsuits in question are modeled after the successful massive lawsuits filed by states and others against the tobacco industry over cigarettes and the pharmaceutical industry over opioids.
Cigarettes and opioids were sold legally, but the lawsuits alleged that industry officials conspired to deceive the public and hide the true dangers of their highly profitable products.
Last September, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Atty. General Rob Bonta expressed the same theme when he filed a lawsuit in San Francisco County Superior Court against five of the largest oil and gas companies (Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP) and the American Petroleum Institute for what they described as a “decades-long campaign of deception” that created climate-related damage in California.
“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us, covering up the fact that they have long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are to our planet,” Newsom said in announcing the lawsuit.
Bonta said oil and gas companies “have privately known the truth for decades – that burning fossil fuels leads to climate change – but they have fed us lies and falsehoods to increase their unprecedented profits at the expense of our environment.” … . It is time for them to pay to reduce the damage they have caused.”
Under state law, plaintiffs can seek damages for broad and open claims, such as failing to warn of a danger, false advertising or creating a public nuisance. All three claims are cited in the California lawsuit. Federal law, by contrast, is typically limited to claims for damages arising under federal law.
City and state officials suing the energy industry are determined to keep climate change cases in state courts, while industry lawyers have fought hard, but so far unsuccessfully, to move them to federal jurisdiction.
For the past four years, judges have rejected procedural appeals from the energy industry seeking to transfer these cases from state to federal courts.
This week, however, industry lawyers are asking judges to decide the underlying question that affects them all: Does federal law and the Clean Air Act preempt or prevent states and their courts from punishing the industry? oil company for the damage caused by greenhouse gases? ?
“This is the end for the oil companies,” said Pat Parenteau, an environmental law expert at Vermont Law School. “They want to take this before the conservative Supreme Court. “It is an attempt to eliminate all these cases.”
Los Angeles attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., who represents Chevron, said the pending lawsuits are based on an “outlandish” legal theory based on false advertising claims, rather than underlying greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is extremely important that the Supreme Court grants review now,” he said. “Global climate change requires a coordinated international policy response, not the unleashing of dozens of baseless local lawsuits that could wreak havoc on federal energy policy and continue for years, even if ultimately doomed to fail.”
If the court votes to hear the cases, Sunoco v. City of Honolulu and Shell v. Honolulu, it will be a victory for the energy industry and a sign that the justices are likely to block the climate change lawsuits. The justices would hear arguments in the fall.
However, if the appeals are rejected, even more cities and states will be encouraged to file their own claims and seek billions in damages from fossil fuel industries.
The appealed case began four years ago when the city and county of Honolulu sued Sunoco and 14 other major oil and gas producers, alleging failure to warn and creating a nuisance.
Last year, the Hawaii Supreme Court refused to dismiss the case.
“Simply put, the plaintiffs say the issue is whether the defendants misled the public about the dangers of fossil fuels and their environmental impact. “We agree…This lawsuit does not seek to regulate emissions and does not seek damages for interstate emissions,” the state court said in a unanimous opinion. “Rather, plaintiffs' lawsuit clearly seeks to challenge the promotion and sale of fossil fuel products without prior notice and with the complicity of a sophisticated disinformation campaign.”
The issue has divided red and blue states.
Early in the Sunoco case, California joined 12 other Democratic-leaning states in urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to keep the lawsuit in Hawaii state court. They argued that the case was about protecting consumers from “deceptive conduct,” which is “an area traditionally regulated by states.”
When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Alabama and 19 other Republican-led states filed a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of the oil companies.
They argued that Hawaii and its courts have “no power to enact disastrous global energy policies through state tort law…and jeopardize access to affordable energy.”
Separately, Alabama filed an unusual motion in May asking the Supreme Court to allow an “original” claim to raise the same issue. Typically, original claims arise from state disputes over boundaries or river water. Legal experts doubted the court would accept such a claim.
Honolulu lawyers urged the court to stay out of it for now and wait, likely for several years, until there is a final verdict in their lawsuit.
The judges could announce by mid-June whether they will take up climate change cases.
