Maine Legal professional Normal Aaron Frey has filed go well with in state court docket towards Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, Sunoco, and the American Petroleum Institute for allegedly “deceiving Mainers for many years concerning the position of their fossil gasoline merchandise in inflicting local weather change.”
The state seeks to carry the oil corporations accountable for failing to warn Mainers and concealing their data concerning the “penalties of the growing use of fossil fuels on Maine’s individuals, financial system, and atmosphere.”
The state is asking that the court docket require the power corporations to pay for each previous and future local weather harms and to power them to “stop their ongoing deception.” The state seeks reduction by way of damages, penalties, abatement, and disgorgement of earnings.
Over the previous 5 years, greater than 20 states, tribes, cities, and counties have introduced comparable local weather deception lawsuits up to now, together with the states of New Jersey, California, Delaware, Minnesota, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia. Cities which have sued embrace Annapolis, Baltimore, Charleston, and Chicago.
The Maine lawsuit contends that the conduct has resulted in huge monetary burdens, public well being impacts, property harm and different harms throughout Maine because of excessive climate, sea-level rise, and hotter temperatures. The grievance additional alleges that the oil corporations knew concerning the probably catastrophic penalties fossil fuels trigger as early because the Sixties, however quite than warn the general public, they protected their very own belongings from local weather change impacts and deployed public relations campaigns to discredit the scientific consensus on local weather change and delay the transition to a lower-carbon future.
“For over half a century, these corporations selected to gasoline earnings as a substitute of following their science to forestall what at the moment are probably irreversible, catastrophic local weather results,” stated Frey. “In so doing, they burdened the State and our residents with the results of their greed and deception.”
Frey’s grievance alleges seven violations of Maine regulation, together with failure to warn, negligence, nuisance, trespass, and unfair commerce practices. It additionally alleges that the American Petroleum Institute “aided and abetted” the fossil gasoline corporations’ deception.
Oil corporations have denied the allegations on this and comparable fits and argued that power coverage shouldn’t be determined in courts.
In an announcement to Insurance coverage Journal, the Shell Group stated that it agrees that “motion is required now on local weather change” and it totally helps the necessity for society to “transition to a lower-carbon future.” Nonetheless, Shell continued, addressing local weather change requires a “collaborative, society-wide strategy” and it does “not imagine the courtroom is the best venue to deal with local weather change.”
Exxon Mobil instructed the New York Times that Maine’s actions “ignore the state’s historic dependence on oil and pure fuel, do nothing to deal with the dangers of local weather change and waste taxpayer {dollars}.”
Oil corporations have additionally pursued a authorized technique of attempting to maneuver the lawsuits from state to federal courts the place they imagine they might fare higher. Whereas that technique has stalled a lot of the litigation, a number of federal courts have affirmed that the circumstances belong in state courts. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court dominated that Minnesota’s lawsuit might proceed in state court docket.
Maine itself was the goal of a climate lawsuit filed earlier this 12 months. A go well with filed by Maine Youth Motion, the Conservation Regulation Basis and the Sierra Membership claims the Maine Division of Environmental Safety is beneath an “present and ongoing statutory obligation” to cut back emissions and has failed to take action.
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