News & Analysis
September 28, 2021
Two Hawai‘i counties that are fighting to hold Big Oil companies accountable for the cost of climate damages they knowingly caused are facing a major test: whether the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will agree that the lawsuits brought by Honolulu and Maui should proceed in state court, where they were originally filed.
In February, Honolulu and Maui won a crucial victory when a federal judge rejected arguments from ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and others to have the cases argued in federal court, where the polluters hope it will be easier to escape accountability. Big Oil’s lawyers are now appealing that decision to the Ninth Circuit, which previously ruled that similar lawsuits from a group of California cities and counties should proceed in state court. (Last month, the same Big Oil lawyers asked a state court judge to dismiss Honolulu’s lawsuit entirely, using some extremely suspect arguments.)
In support of Honolulu and Maui’s arguments at the Ninth Circuit, the Center for Climate Integrity, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and leading scholars of the fossil fuel industry’s climate deception — including Drs. Robert Brulle, Justin Farrell, Benjamin Franta, Naomi Oreskes, and Geoffrey Supran, and Stephan Lewandowsky — have submitted an amicus (“friend-of-the-court”) brief to the Ninth Circuit that lays out the evidence of these companies’ historical and ongoing efforts to lie to the public about their products’ role in climate change.
It’s no coincidence that the executives of four of the defendant companies — Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron — were recently asked to testify before Congress as part of an ongoing investigation into their campaigns to spread climate disinformation. As our Ninth Circuit amicus brief explains in detail, the oil defendants had early knowledge of the harms associated with their fossil-fuel products, took proactive steps to discredit climate science, moved to protect their own assets while lying to the public about the danger, and continue to lie about their role in the climate crisis to this day through greenwashing and other marketing tactics.
