News & Analysis
January 8, 2026
Honolulu can gather additional evidence that Big Oil companies are still deceiving the public about their role in the climate crisis as part of the City and County’s lawsuit that seeks to make the companies pay for climate damages, a Hawaiʻi state court has ruled. First Circuit Court Judge Lisa Cataldo rejected four of the companies’ latest motions to get the case dropped, keeping Honolulu on track to become one of the first communities in the U.S. to put Big Oil companies on trial for their climate lies and the harm they’ve caused.
Honolulu’s case, filed in 2020, aims to make ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and other oil majors pay for the cost of climate damages that the companies long knew their businesses would create and intensify, including rising sea levels, coastal erosion, flooding, supercharged storms, and other extreme weather events. State courts, including the Supreme Court of Hawaiʻi, have all rejected the Big Oil defendants’ various attempts to stop this case from moving forward in recent years.
The oil defendants most recently claimed that the statute of limitations on the fossil fuel companies lies had passed — a claim that experts in climate disinformation vehemently opposed on behalf of Honolulu city and county.
“Today, the fossil fuel industry, including Defendants, do not appropriately publicize that climate change is caused from the burning of fossil fuels; instead, they frame themselves as acting responsibly in response to climate risks, all while their business model remains based on continued development, sale, and use of fossil fuels,” Harvard professor and climate disinformation historian Naomi Oreskes wrote in a declaration on behalf of Honolulu. “The purpose of this behavior has been to protect fossil fuel business interests.”
Ruling in favor of Honolulu, Judge Cataldo found that it “would not be futile” to allow additional discovery, which will permit Honolulu to more fully develop the record of Big Oil’s continuous and ongoing deception.
A growing body of evidence shows that the fossil fuel industry’s deception is ongoing. In 2024, a joint report from the Senate and House echoed Oreskes’s argument, stating that the fossil fuel industry has evolved from “explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.” CCI recently published a report detailing Big Oil’s deceptive climate ads over the past 25 years, featuring nearly 300 ads from Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell that aim to falsely reposition the companies as partners in the fight against climate change.
Cataldo also ruled that the scope of Honolulu’s case is not strictly limited to the fossil fuel companies’ conduct within the state, disagreeing with the Big Oil defendants’ interpretation of a previous court’s ruling.
Maui County and the state of Hawaiʻi are also suing oil majors for their coordinated campaign of climate deception, along with dozens of communities across the country.
