News & Analysis
February 26, 2025
Big Oil companies should face charges that their coordinated climate deception violated federal racketeering and antitrust laws, a judge recommended last week in a groundbreaking lawsuit brought by Puerto Rico municipalities in 2022.
In the first-of-its-kind case, 37 Puerto Rico municipalities are seeking to hold ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and other major fossil fuel companies accountable for conspiring to deceive the public about how their products fuel climate change. The lawsuit argues that the companies unfairly rigged the marketplace in order to block cleaner forms of energy, fueling deadly climate disasters in Puerto Rico such as Hurricanes Maria and Irma.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Héctor Ramos-Vega wrote that the municipalities’ argument that Big Oil’s actions violated federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) and antitrust laws should be allowed to go forward. A federal district court judge will now decide whether to uphold that finding.
Ramos-Vega’s analysis of the case rejected Big Oil’s ongoing attempts to mischaracterize the growing number of lawsuits against them as targeting pollution, rather than deception. "At the heart of Plaintiffs’ claims for relief is a purported decades-long misinformation and propaganda campaign,” he wrote. “Thus, the culprit is Defendants’ words, not their emissions.”
Lawyers representing the Puerto Rico communities welcomed the magistrate’s recommendations. “By sustaining our racketeering and antitrust claims, this case will be ground zero for holding the participants in this racketeering enterprise accountable,” said Marc Grossman, a senior partner at Milberg. “It is time for those who built this empire of deception to answer for their actions in a court of law.”
The lawsuit was originally filed by 16 Puerto Rico municipalities in 2022, and later amended to include 37 communities: Bayamón, Caguas, Loíza, Lares, Barranquitas, Comerío, Cayey, Las Marías, Trujillo Alto, Vega Baja, Añasco, Cidra, Aguadilla, Aibonito, Morovis, Moca, Barceloneta, Camuy, Cataño, Salinas, Adjuntas, Arroyo, Culebra, Dorado, Guaynabo, Hormigueros, Juncos, Lajas, Manatí, Naguabo, Naranjito, Utuado, Villalba, Coamo, Orocovis, Vieques, and Yabucoa. San Juan has also filed a similar but separate federal lawsuit.
Last year, Puerto Rico Secretary of Justice Domingo Emanuelli Hernández joined the growing number of attorneys general taking on Big Oil by filing a climate deception lawsuit in Commonwealth court on behalf of the entire Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
