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Maui: Oil Companies Should Pay for Climate Damages They Caused

October 12, 2020 Filed Under: Liability Litigation, Other Suits

By Karen Savage

Hawaii’s Maui County, which covers four islands and has nearly 300 miles of coastline, on Monday became the latest in a wave of municipalities that have sued fossil fuel companies to hold them accountable for their role in climate change.

In the suit, filed Monday in state court, Maui County alleges that Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP and more than a dozen other companies have known for decades that their products pose a grave risk to the climate. The suit says that instead of warning the public, the companies engaged in a coordinated campaign to “conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats, discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt in the minds of customers, consumers, regulators, the media, journalists, teachers, and the public about the reality and consequences of the impacts of their fossil fuel pollution.”

The companies’ actions have “contributed substantially to the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere that drives global warming and its physical, environmental, and socioeconomic consequences, including those affecting the County,” Moana M. Lutey, corporation counsel for Maui County wrote in the complaint.

The suit joins another already filed in Hawaii by the city and county of Honolulu and dozens more already filed across the country, which make similar claims against a similar group of companies. Most are locked in a battle over whether they will be heard in state or federal courts. The suits have overwhelmingly been filed in state courts but the industry has fought to move them to federal court, where they believe they have a better chance of getting them dismissed. The U.S. Supreme Court last week agreed to weigh in on a jurisdictional-related technicality in a suit filed by Baltimore. 

Maui County joined the trend because it is already experiencing climate impacts, including chronic drought, more intense heat waves, high tide flooding, wildfires and worsening coastal erosion, according to County Mayor Michael Victorino, who announced last year that he intended to file the suit.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Liability Litigation, Other Suits

Oil Companies Push Again to Get Louisiana Cases Back in Federal Court

September 10, 2020 Filed Under: Latest News, Other Suits

By Karen Savage

Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips have asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision to keep lawsuits in state court that have been filed against them by several Louisiana parishes.

In petitions filed Tuesday, the companies contend a three-judge panel of the appellate court erred when it ruled that the companies waited too long before moving the cases to federal court.

The suits were filed by Plaquemines and Cameron Parishes and are among more than 40 that have been brought by Louisiana parishes against oil and gas companies since 2013. The parishes allege the companies’ drilling, dredging and waste disposal operations have severely damaged the state’s wetlands.

The fossil fuel companies have tried repeatedly to have the cases heard in federal court.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Latest News, Other Suits

Investors: Exxon’s ‘Self Investigation’ Shouldn’t Sink Their Lawsuit

September 8, 2020 Filed Under: Other Suits

By Karen Savage

Institutional investors suing ExxonMobil in New Jersey have asked a federal court judge in Texas for permission to intervene in a lawsuit filed against the company by shareholders in that state.

Those investors—Saratoga Advantage Trust Energy & Basic Materials Portfolio and the City of Birmingham Retirement and Relief System—argue that if the Texas case is dismissed with prejudice, as Exxon has requested, it could result in the dismissal of their suit.

“If this court grants dismissal, it should do so without prejudice, or alternatively, with prejudice to the named Texas plaintiffs only,” the New Jersey investors wrote in their motion to intervene, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas. 

When cases are dismissed with prejudice, the court is indicating it has made a final decision on the merits of the case and it cannot be filed again.

Plaintiffs in both states allege that current and former Exxon executives and board members failed to protect their investments and the company from the risks of climate change. 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Other Suits

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