News & Analysis
December 1, 2022
Sixteen Puerto Rico municipalities last week filed the latest lawsuit seeking to hold major oil, gas, and coal corporations accountable for fueling the climate crisis — and specifically for the role their coordinated climate deception played in the 2017 hurricane season that claimed thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars in damage to the U.S. territory.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in federal court, is the first to charge ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and other major fossil fuel companies with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which is better known as RICO and has famously been used to prosecute organized crime. The companies invested billions in a “fraudulent marketing scheme to convince consumers that their fossil fuel-based products did not — and would not — alter the climate, knowing full well the consequences of their combined carbon pollution on Puerto Rico,” according to the complaint. It seeks to make the companies pay billions of dollars for the damages the municipalities suffered during Hurricane Maria and other storms in 2017, which were intensified by global warming. It also argues that the companies violated fraud, racketeering, antitrust, product liability, and nuisance laws, and also describes the real threats to human and constitutional rights of the affected Puerto Rican communities.
The municipalities in the lawsuit are Bayamón, Caguas, Loíza, Lares, Barranquitas, Comerío, Cayey, Las Marías, Trujillo Alto, Vega Baja, Añasco, Cidra, Aguadilla, Aibonito, Morovis and Moca.
Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz told El Nuevo Día that it was important to participate “not only because of what the municipality could receive in economic terms, which could be injected into the renewable and solar energy projects we have, but also because it sends a message that large companies have an ethical and moral obligation to humanity and that they have to be careful with how they do their business.”*
While these Puerto Rico communities bring new legal arguments against Big Oil companies in federal court, they join more than two dozen other U.S. states, cities, counties, and the District of Columbia that are advancing their own climate accountability lawsuits toward trial in state court. That means that in total there are now 43 different communities across the United States fighting to hold Big Oil companies accountable for their climate lies — and make them pay for the damage they caused.
*Translated from the original Spanish
Image from National Guard (Sgt. Alexis Vélez) on flickr.
