News & Analysis
May 6, 2025
Chevron’s latest attack on Rhode Island’s climate deception lawsuit against the company and other oil giants was rejected by a state judge last month, keeping the state on a path to put fossil fuel companies on trial for their decades of climate deception.
Rhode Island was the first state in the country to sue ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and other Big Oil companies in 2018 for lying about their product’s role in fueling climate change, charging the companies with engaging in a “coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge” of the climate crisis. In legal briefs, the fossil fuel companies have conceded that they face “massive monetary liability” in Rhode Island’s case, and they have spent years trying to escape trial and avoid facing evidence of their climate lies in state court. Exxon and its fellow fossil fuel defendants even asked the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 to review lower court decisions in Rhode Island’s favor, only to have the high court reject the petition and keep the case on track to proceed in state court.
The latest attack on the state’s case hinged on the interpretation of a few lines in the complaint, and two words specifically: “and/or.” Seven years after the case was originally filed, Chevron argued that how Rhode Island described the company’s fossil fuel activities in the state could not be factually supported – and warranted sanctions — an argument Judge William Carnes rejected. Rhode Island is seeking damages from 21 companies whose “fossil fuel products are or have been extracted, refined, transported, traded, distributed, marketed, promoted, manufactured, sold, and/or consumed” in Rhode Island. Chevron argued that the state needed to prove that the oil giant had engaged in every behavior listed in the state’s complaint, but the judge agreed with Rhode Island’s interpretation of “and/or,” finding that the state was charging the oil company with engaging in at least some of the activities in the list.
While the Big Oil defendants will continue to fight being held accountable for their climate lies, the semantic defense from Chevron underscored just how threatened Big Oil companies feel by communities demanding accountability. Since Rhode Island first filed its case in 2018, dozens of communities across the country have followed suit, filing a growing wave of climate accountability cases against Big Oil companies and their lies. Neighboring Massachusetts, for example, is preparing to put ExxonMobil on trial for deceiving consumers about their products’ role in the climate crisis.
“We have a fiduciary obligation to the citizens and taxpayers to hold Big Oil accountable for the damages they caused and, more importantly, we have a moral obligation to protect our natural resources, wildlife, our quality of life, and leave this Rhode Island a better place for future generations and put the planet before profits,” said former Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, when he filed the case.
