Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Can a City Really Sue an Oil Company For Climate Change? (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The city of Richmond, California, is suing Chevron, its largest employer and its largest public-safety scourge. But while industrial accidents like refinery fires are commonplace in the low-lying industrial town, that's not what this lawsuit is about. Richmond and six other California cities are suing oil companies for contributing to the changing climate, which threatens to inundate their shorelines. "In an era of federal deregulation and rising seas, these lawsuits feel increasingly urgent," writes deputy editor Adam Rogers. "The question is whether the courts will even see them as plausible."
The lawsuits face two big legal hurdles: getting scientific proof that climate change (and specific companies causing climate change) are to blame for the cities' woes, along with overcoming oil companies' contention that cities can't sue them at all, since at the federal level, they're beholden to the Clean Air Act. But the urban plaintiffs have a plan for that. They are not asking for new regulations or bans; they're asking for reparations for a problem they say oil companies willfully hid from them. "Oil and gas, like cigarettes, are products. The companies that sell them are liable for the damages they cause," says Sharon Eubanks, an attorney at Bordas & Bordas who was lead counsel in the Justice Department's RICO case against the Philip Morris tobacco company. "They have misled the public about the product's dangers."
The lawsuits face two big legal hurdles: getting scientific proof that climate change (and specific companies causing climate change) are to blame for the cities' woes, along with overcoming oil companies' contention that cities can't sue them at all, since at the federal level, they're beholden to the Clean Air Act. But the urban plaintiffs have a plan for that. They are not asking for new regulations or bans; they're asking for reparations for a problem they say oil companies willfully hid from them. "Oil and gas, like cigarettes, are products. The companies that sell them are liable for the damages they cause," says Sharon Eubanks, an attorney at Bordas & Bordas who was lead counsel in the Justice Department's RICO case against the Philip Morris tobacco company. "They have misled the public about the product's dangers."
The cities have already lost this simply because their citizen continue to burn fuel. If you are going to make a case for this the very first thing the cities should do is ban all burning of hydrocarbons within their city limits. If they don't do that then they are just as guilty as anyone else.
Of course juries like to stick it to companies whether they are guilty or not. And then that results in decades of appeals to more sensible forums.
Yes, a city can sue an oil company for damages because they've already done it.
Also, as soon as the PLCAA is overturned (that's the 2005 law that makes firearms manufacturers the only industry that is exempt from civil lawsuits when their products harm people), you will see an overwhelming avalanche of lawsuits that will flip the entire gun control discussion in the US. Making corporations accountable for the external costs of what they do will be the legal trend of the coming decades. They've been getting a free ride long enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because you can quit fossil fuels anytime you want, right?
We've allowed our rail lines to languish, gutted our cities with parking craters, and rebuilt them around the automobile such that driving is now the only feasible way of getting around American cities. Would we have done anything different if the oil companies hadn't lied and suppressed evidence about the environmental harm of burning fossil fuels? I think this is the real test of liability.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The analogy with cigarettes is valid. Just because the tobacco companies sold the cigs uncombusted does not and should not absolve them of responsibility for deception with regards to the effects of that product's use.