The state of California filed a lawsuit Saturday against major oil companies, claiming that their production of fossil fuels has contributed to climate change and natural disasters.

The suit, which was filed in the Superior Court of California in the County of San Francisco, alleges that deception by the defendants caused a delayed societal response to global warming, and that their misconduct has greatly affected people, property and natural resources, according to court filings. The suit targets oil companies Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the trade group American Petroleum Institute, which it claims promoted disinformation about climate change. (RELATED: House Passes Bill To Protect Gas-Powered Cars Amid California’s Electric Vehicle Push)

“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us – covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a press release. “It has been decades of damage and deception. Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill. California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable.”

The timing of the suit was partially motivated by a decision from the Supreme Court in April that enables existing suits from local governments to enter state court rather than federal court, increasing the likelihood of a friendly ruling on a climate-related case, according to Politico.

The lawsuit asks the defendants to pay for a portion of recovery efforts for weather events and wildfires that the state argues were induced by climate change, measures to protect people from rising temperatures, water supply issues and fortifications against sea level rise and flooding, according to the press release.

“California’s lawsuit does nothing to advance meaningful solutions to climate change and is a costly distraction from the important work that needs to be done,” the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project said in a statement about the lawsuit. “This litigation has no legal merit, which is why it has already been rejected by the federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court cautioned more than a decade ago that courts are simply not the appropriate places to decide climate policy.”

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California, a top oil-producing state, is suing the oil majors and an influential ally — making it the latest and largest player among a growing number of local governments looking to hold fossil fuel companies financially accountable for the effects of climate change.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses five of the world’s largest oil companies and their subsidiaries, along with the industry trade association the American Petroleum Institute, of waging a campaign to mislead the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels.

“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change — but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record-breaking profits at the expense of our environment,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D). “Enough is enough.”

The move immediately vaults California to the top of a group of mostly Democratic-led states, including New Jersey, Massachusetts and Minnesota, that have filed lawsuits against the oil giants, as have two dozen local counties and cities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who was to use a press conference Sunday kicking off the United Nations climate summit and New York City’s Climate Week to tout the state’s involvement, argued the industry has lied about its contribution to global climate change for more than 50 years.

“It has been decades of damage and deception,” Newsom said. “Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill.”

The industry argued the lawsuit will do “nothing to advance meaningful solutions to climate change.”

“The challenge of our time is developing technologies and public policies so that the world can produce and use energy in ways that are affordable for people and sustainable for the planet,” said Phil Goldberg, special counsel to the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, an initiative of the National Association of Manufacturers. “It should not be figuring out how to creatively plead lawsuits that seek to monetize climate change and provide no solutions.”

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The Supreme Court’s decision to reject a batch of climate liability petitions from oil companies paves the way for a flood of lawsuits against the industry to be heard in state courts from Maryland to Hawaii.

The high court on Monday turned down five requests from the oil industry to intervene in cases brought by a dozen municipalities. The decision involves a narrow slice of law — whether climate lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry should be heard by state or federal judges — but the outcome could be sweeping.

The move stands to accelerate nearly two dozen climate lawsuits filed by states and municipalities that have been stalled for years by oil industry efforts to move the cases from state to federal court, where the companies believe they have a better chance to win. The lawsuits ask for compensation to help pay for local responses to the effects of climate change.

“The high court’s decision is a major victory for communities across the country that are fighting to hold Big Oil accountable and make them pay for the climate damages they knowingly caused,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which backs the cases. “Now it’s time for these polluters to face the evidence of their deception in court.”

The industry had argued that the cases carry “potentially enormous consequences for an entire sector of the global economy.”

Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, an initiative of the National Association of Manufacturers that opposes the climate liability lawsuits, said the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the cases “risks the creation of a patchwork of state court approaches to important public policy matters that are inherently federal and global in nature.”

But he argued that “even under state law, selling Americans the energy they need and use every day is not a liability inducing event.”

Goldberg predicted that when the courts get to the substance of the claims, “it will be evident that this litigation has no legal or factual foundation.“

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The United States Supreme Court decided Monday to allow several municipal climate change lawsuits against major oil companies to be allowed to proceed in their respective state courts.

NBC News reported that the decision impacts cases against Big Oil companies in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii, and Rhode Island, where the plaintiffs believe they can prevail for damages.

“Big Oil companies have been desperate to avoid trials in state courts, where they will be forced to defend their climate lies in front of juries, and today the Supreme Court declined to bail them out,” Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental group, told the news outlet Monday.

The report said business groups are unhappy with the decision and feel the cases should be heard at the national or international level.

“The challenge of our time is developing technologies and public policies so that the world can produce and use energy in ways that are affordable for people and sustainable for the planet,” Phil Goldberg, a lawyer with the National Association of Manufacturers said in the report. “It should not be figuring out how to creatively plead lawsuits that seek to monetize climate change and provide no solutions.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, municipalities in the five states are suing major oil companies including Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., and Shell PLC, for “various environmental harms” committed under the respective state’s laws and caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

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WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – Oil companies facing climate change lawsuits won’t have the U.S. Supreme Court’s support on a key issue.

SCOTUS on April 24 declined to review appeals in several cases, leaving in place orders that allowed cities and counties, represented by private lawyers working on contingency fees, to pursue their litigation in state courts.

The government officials and private lawyers prefer state courts and fought to have their cases heard there after defendants like Exxon and Chevron removed them to federal court. The oil industry figured to be able to mount stronger defenses in federal court.

The oil companies argue the federal government explicitly encourages oil and gas development as national policy and the governments suing them are some of the biggest users of fossil fuels, with large fleets of automobiles, trucks and buses.

But the lawsuits make state law public nuisance claims, federal courts have ruled in remanding the cases to state court. Only Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted to hear the appeals. Justice Sam Alito didn’t participate.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the federal law issues in this case is certainly disappointing because it risks the creation of a patchwork of state court approaches to important public policy matters that are inherently federal and global in nature,” said Phil Goldberg, special counsel to the Manufacturers Accountability Project.

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CLIMATEWIRE | In one of the most closely watched climate legal battles of 2023, the White House and the Supreme Court are poised to play critical roles in litigation that could cost the fossil fuel industry hundreds of billions of dollars.

The high court in October invited the Justice Department to share its views on a long-running venue fight that could sink nearly two dozen state-level lawsuits asking oil and gas companies to pay for the costs of a warming planet.

DOJ’s response is expected early this year and could influence the court’s decision whether to wade into the procedural morass for a second time. A Supreme Court ruling moving the lawsuits to federal judges could scuttle the cases or impose further roadblocks (Climatewire, Oct. 12, 2022).

“They’re going to do whatever they want to do or what they think is right to do,” Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said of the justices. “But they do have to think about just how sweeping a decision it would be to load the federal courts with cases that are now being litigated in the state courts.”

The climate liability cases are just one part of broader legal efforts by environmental groups and young activists to hold governments and companies to account for climate change — and by Republicans and oil industry allies to weaken aggressive policies.

While appellate judges from Rhode Island to Hawaii in 2022 rejected oil and gas companies’ attempts to quash the climate liability lawsuits by moving them from state to federal court, industry lawyers believe the Supreme Court may be sympathetic to their claims.

The justices in 2021 directed appeals courts to consider each of industry’s eight arguments as to why the cases should be heard by federal judges, including that energy production is often done at the direction of a “federal officer.”

Many of the cases charge the companies with violating state consumer protection laws by deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels and ask oil companies to pay the costs of combating wildfires, flooding and other effects of climate change.

“The appeals courts have considered every argument, they’ve meticulously explained their rationale, they’ve applied all of the relevant precedents, and they’ve all reached precisely the same conclusion,” said Parenteau.

But unanimity among lower courts is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will side with the state and local governments, Parenteau said, pointing to the court’s decision in June to overturn 50 years of abortion precedent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Oil and gas companies, however, argue that climate liability lawsuits raise questions that can’t be resolved by the courts. And they warned the Supreme Court that the lawsuits pose a “massive monetary liability” to the industry.

The litigation has been compared to legal battles waged against the tobacco industry, which culminated in 1998 in a $206 billion settlement (Climatewire, March 10, 2021).

“These are policy decisions that really belong with the legislative and regulatory bodies,” Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, an initiative of the National Association of Manufacturers that opposes the climate lawsuits, said at a recent Pepperdine University School of Public Policy webinar.

“This litigation isn’t very useful,” he said. “It distracts from what actually needs to be done. What we really need are real global solutions.”

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