Baltimore judge drops climate case, handing victory to big oil – Inside Climate News

In a groundbreaking decision, a Maryland judge on Wednesday dismissed Baltimore City’s climate lawsuit against major oil giants, saying state courts are not competent to address a global issue like climate change.

Originally filed in 2018, the lawsuit is one of a dozen similar cases against powerful oil companies, including Chevron, Exxon and BP, that are making their way through courts across the country.

Across the United States, jurisdictions are feeling the effects of climate change and using legal means to extract compensation from oil giants they say profited from selling products they knew were causing environmental damage and causing disasters like global warming and extreme weather.

Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Videtta A. Brown sided with the oil companies, saying the gas emissions that damaged Baltimore fall under the federal Clean Air Act.

“Whatever the nature of the claim, the analysis and the answer are the same: The federal structure of the Constitution does not permit the application of state law to claims like those brought by Baltimore,” Brown wrote in his opinion. “Congress never intended for states to address global pollution claims individually.”

Sara Gross, chief of the affirmative litigation division in the Baltimore City Law Department, said her office disagreed with Brown’s decision and would seek review by a higher court.

The city, in its case, argued that oil and gas companies were liable for damages because they falsely marketed their products and concealed the harms associated with burning fossil fuels but failed to regulate gas emissions.

“This decision is the oil companies’ dream. It’s what they would like to see happen in all of these cases,” said Robert Percival, professor and director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law.

Percival said Brown argued that while Baltimore City was seeking damages for consumer fraud and misinformation, it was actually seeking to regulate emissions.

“These cases were state consumer fraud lawsuits brought by the oil companies for lying about the impact of their products and engaging in a disinformation campaign,” Percival said, adding that he believed the judge was wrong to rule that a state damages claim would have the effect of regulating emissions, which is within the purview of the Clean Air Act.

“The Clean Air Act does not contain any statutory damages provision and does not provide anything that would allow plaintiffs to recover damages for consumer fraud,” Percival said, noting that even the Supreme Court has previously declined to rule that the Clean Air Act preempts state common law, as illustrated by the 2011 decision in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut.

Alyssa Johl, vice president and general counsel at the Center for Climate Integrity, a Washington-based environmental organization, said the decision was at odds with how other courts have ruled in similar cases, including a Maryland state court that allowed climate fraud lawsuits that the city of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County separately filed against fossil fuel companies to proceed.

“Judges across the country have agreed that cases like Baltimore are about holding bad actors accountable for fraud and deception; they are not about regulating broadcasts,” Johl wrote in an email.

The decision is a major victory for the energy giants, which have consistently tried to avoid litigating in state courts and even asked the Supreme Court to rule that the cases belong in federal courts. But the Supreme Court declined to hear that request and sent the cases back to state courts.

“The oil companies thought the only way to get these cases dismissed was to take them to federal court. But the courts consistently rejected that idea, saying these cases belonged in state courts,” Percival said.

“Federal law doesn’t provide for damages, so this is kind of the oil companies’ dream. Their goal is to avoid a trial that would reveal what they’ve really known about the effects of their products on climate change for decades. They’re constantly trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to completely overstep its authority and eliminate all state climate litigation.”

Michael Gerrard, a professor of professional practice at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, called the decision “a setback for similar cases.” In January, a Delaware court ruled that state claims against oil companies could proceed, but that damages would be limited to emissions in the state of Delaware.

The Delaware lawsuit alleges that the fossil fuel industry concealed the dangers of its products, which in turn harmed the state.

“There are cases that go both ways on this. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled similarly in a case called City of New York v. Chevron. Courts in Hawaii, Massachusetts and Colorado have ruled the other way and said the cases can move forward. This is largely a state law issue, with no uniform outcome nationwide unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in and closes all the cases,” Gerrard said.

Percival disagreed with this assertion, saying that “the courts have uniformly allowed the cases to proceed, and this is the first case based solely on state law that has been completely dismissed.”

When the lawsuit was filed in 2018, Baltimore City Attorney Andre Davis said, “These oil and gas companies have known for decades that their products would harm communities like ours, and we are going to hold them accountable. Baltimore residents, workers, and businesses should not have to pay for the harms these companies knowingly caused.”

It was the 13th such lawsuit filed at the time. The complaint sought to hold 26 oil and gas companies liable for damages related to sea-level rise and environmental changes that were responsible for extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts, heat waves and extreme precipitation caused by the companies’ products.