News & Analysis
September 18, 2025
Puerto Rico municipalities will appeal a judge’s decision to dismiss their groundbreaking federal racketeering lawsuit against Big Oil companies on technical grounds. U.S. Judge Silvia Carreño-Coll said that the first-of-its-kind case was filed outside the statute of limitations, but her ruling did not address the merits of the communities’ argument that major fossil fuel companies conspired to deceive the public about how their products would fuel deadly climate disasters such as Hurricanes Maria and Irma.
“The claims being barred by the applicable statutes of limitations, the Court has not examined the merits, or lack thereof, of the legal theories advanced by Plaintiffs,” Carreño-Coll wrote. “But the Court is not insensitive to the plight of the people of Puerto Rico resultant from the 2017 hurricanes.”
In their lawsuit, the communities argued that ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and other major oil companies formed a corrupt enterprise to unfairly rig the marketplace in order to block cleaner forms of energy — ultimately fueling massive damages the municipalities suffered from the 2017 storms and other climate impacts. Earlier this year, a magistrate judge recommended that the Puerto Rico communities’ racketeering and antitrust claims be allowed to go forward.
Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz previously said that the case “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.”
The latest ruling still leaves the door open for other communities to file similar racketeering claims against the fossil fuel industry. In a separate lawsuit, Hoboken, New Jersey, is seeking to hold many of the same companies accountable under that state’s racketeering laws.
Puerto Rico’s racketeering case was the first-of-its-kind to be filed, but calls for Big Oil to be investigated for racketeering date back to 2015. The same year that investigative journalists broke the story that Exxon knew and lied to the public for decades about the climate harm of its products, members of Congress, including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, suggested Big Oil could face RICO charges similar to those against Big Tobacco and called for investigations.
During a 2024 Congressional hearing exploring Big Oil’s known climate deception, Sharon Eubanks — the former director of the Tobacco Litigation Team at the Department of Justice — made direct comparisons between evidence that proved the tobacco industry engaged in racketeering and the trove of internal documents uncovered by investigations into the oil and gas industry’s climate deception.
“We should not waste time wringing our hands — we have documents that lay out what is currently happening,” Eubanks told members of Congress. “There exists solid evidentiary basis to support more information being gathered on these companies, just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering case.”
Following the hearing, members of Congress recommended the Department of Justice formally investigate major fossil fuel companies for fraud and racketeering.