Supreme Court Rules for Oil-and-Gas Companies Fighting Climate Lawsuit
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court handed the city of Baltimore a preliminary setback in its bid to sue more than 20 multinational oil-and-gas companies on allegations they contributed to climate change and misled the public.
Baltimore filed the 2018 lawsuit in Maryland state court, alleging energy companies failed to warn the public about the dangers of their products. The city says it has suffered climate-change-related injuries, including from rising sea levels and extreme weather, and seeks to recover monetary damages. Other state and local governments have filed similar lawsuits.
The defendants fighting such claims include BP PLC, Chevron Corp. , Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. They sought to move Baltimore's case to federal court, which they argued is a more appropriate venue with fairer procedural protections. The companies said the case belonged in the federal system because some of their oil-and-gas exploration efforts have come at the behest of the federal government.
A federal trial judge denied the request in 2019 and last year a federal appeals court said it was largely powerless to consider moving the case out of the state system.
The high court, in a 7-1 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, on Monday said that decision was incorrect. In a highly technical ruling, the Supreme Court sent the case back to a federal appeals court for further proceedings. The justices said nothing about the substance of the case.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Justice Samuel Alito didn’t participate in the case. His public financial disclosures indicate that he has investment holdings in the energy sector that would prohibit him from considering the lawsuit.
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Claiming that oil & gas companies contributed to climate change would seem to be a tough thing to prove. Making the claim over and over is a slam dunk with the media. Proving it is something else.
Only Sotomayor dissented.
Tough thing to prove?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Perhaps you'd like to prove it to us. We have many readers here who want to know.
The city says it has suffered climate-change-related injuries, including from rising sea levels and extreme weather, and seeks to recover monetary damages. Other state and local governments have filed similar lawsuits.
This will be very hard to prove. I wonder if any scientific evidence was used in the lawsuits?
Evidently the city proclamation wasn't enough.
Not really. Their products are burned as fuel, burning them releases gases like CO2, which are "heat trapping" molecules, into the atmosphere thus causing more of the energy from the sun to be retained within the Earth's atmosphere, thus heating said atmosphere and the planet. This is not up for debate, the science is completely clear.
Now holding them liable is a completely different story considering they didn't force anyone to use their products. Their lobbying efforts and their impact can be debated to be sure, but at the end of the day we all had a choice, and we chose to burn fossil fuels and bring on the consequences. Now we are starting to make a different choice and hopefully mitigate the damage from the last one.
Regardless I don't see these companies being made to pay anything in damages, unless it can be shown that they made a concerted effort to actively hide or supress the harmful effects of their products, because a) again no one was forced to use their products, b) who would they even have to pay damages to, and c) how would you even evaluate a reasonable figure for said damages?
All good questions.
Of course. Did you expect anything else from a very conservative court? Right or wrong barely matters, cases are determined on a political basis.
Oh, what's wrong John? You don't have those leftist activists running the Court anymore? Fifty years wasn't enough?
It's time to restore the Constitution!
Kagan and Breyer are very conservative? They agreed with the ruling.
It's insane that a 7-1 decision can be attacked as politicized.
We call that Checkmate!
ok, say we buy into your imaginative theory.
please explain how the decision was 7 to 1 if only conservatives voted for it should be interesting to see the spin on this!
Meh ... Lamborghini is coming out with an electricity guzzling model by 2030 ... that should take a dozen or so gas guzzlers off the streets.
We'll all be waiting for that/s
Why are you so morose all the time?
Don't you know? We have a democrat in the White House.
It happens, get over it ... Western Montana is nice this time of the year, buy a camper and take a vacation ... read some of those books you shill.
Next winter I'll be back in Florida. As of tomorrow Connecticut "reopens" as in their two resort Casino's and I'll be on the road again.
Right now I'm re-reading "Death in the Afternoon."
Thanks for the concern.
Did the left ever get over Trump being in the White House? Or either of the Bushes, or Reagan?
what kind of special does one have to be to call the court's decision political?
All this ruling does is state the plaintiffs must re-file in federal court.