News & Analysis
March 16, 2021
Major oil and gas companies keep trying to delay the growing number of lawsuits that seek to hold them accountable for the cost of climate damages they knowingly caused. Thankfully, courts across the country keep rejecting their efforts.
The latest example came this weekend, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request from Chevron, Exxon, and other Big Oil companies to stop separate climate damages lawsuits brought by Honolulu and Maui counties from being sent back to state court, where they were originally filed.
The two lawsuits, which the court called “substantially similar,” aim to hold more than a dozen fossil fuel companies accountable for their decades-long campaign to deceive the public about the impact of their products. The counties’ respective complaints cite an array of expensive damages — from sea-level rise and heat waves to flooding and wildfires — that the islands are now facing as a result. In February, U.S. Judge Derrick Watson rejected the oil defendants’ arguments for keeping the lawsuits in federal court, where the industry has repeatedly tried but failed to have similar cases heard.
In response, the Big Oil companies filed an emergency request for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause Judge Watson’s ruling, pending the industry’s ongoing pleas for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a nationwide ruling that climate damages cases should be heard in federal court. But on Saturday, a two-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit swiftly denied that request, ruling that the Big Oil defendants “failed [to] establish that they will suffer irreparable injury” if the case proceeds in state court.
Despite Big Oil’s best efforts to escape accountability, the people of Honolulu and Maui are now one step closer to getting their rightful day in court.
