(C) Common Dreams
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Judges aren’t buying Big Oil’s favorite legal argument [1]
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Date: 2023-05
More than two dozen states and localities have filed lawsuits in state court that seek to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about the “catastrophic” climate damages they knew their fossil fuel products would cause — and, in many cases, to make them pay their fair share of billions of dollars in resulting costs.
In every single case, lawyers for the Big Oil companies — which include ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP — have attempted the same legal maneuver to avoid a potential day of judgment in state court: they argue that these lawsuits actually belong in federal court, where the industry hopes it will be easier to escape accountability.
But judges across the country are not persuaded. Instead, with one exception in California that was later overturned by a higher court, every single judge to consider this issue has rejected Big Oil’s arguments and ruled that climate accountability lawsuits filed in state court belong in state court — “a batting average of .000” as one judge put it.
Following a complicated ruling last year from the U.S. Supreme Court, some states and communities that have already defeated Big Oil’s attempts to move their cases to federal court will now have to do so again. That’s because the high court’s ruling now allows the companies to present additional arguments to federal appeals courts––including the same courts of appeal that already ruled against the oil and gas companies once before.
The first of these “expanded” circuit court arguments is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, January 25, in a climate damages lawsuit brought by the City of Baltimore against 26 oil and gas companies. Baltimore’s case was the subject of last year’s Supreme Court ruling.
As fossil fuel companies try again to escape trials about their climate deception in state court, it’s worth noting how truly abysmal the companies’ track record in these efforts has been.
Here are ten different times that federal judges flat-out rejected the arguments that Exxon, Chevron, and other oil giants will continue making in 2022 for why they shouldn’t face climate accountability lawsuits in state courts:
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[1] Url:
https://climateintegrity.org/news/judges-arent-buying-big-oils-favorite-legal-argument
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