Oil Companies Sued for Katrina
Over the last decade, global warming has become a hot topic.
Big Storm-a-Brewin'
In Mass v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court held that the EPA has the authority, under the Clean Air Act, to regulate air pollutants, including greenhouse gas emissions.
In Comer v. Murphy Oil (2009), plaintiff’s allege that the defendants’ business operations in the United States emitted green house gases that exacerbated global warming and intensified Hurricane Katrina. The plaintiffs’ seek both compensatory and punitive damages based on Mississippi common-law actions of public and private nuisance, trespass, negligence, unjust enrichment, fraudulent misrepresentation, and civil conspiracy.
On appeal, the Firth Circuit concluded that the plaintiffs have standing to assert their public and private nuisance, trespass, and negligence claims. None of those claims present nonjusticiable political questions as contended by the defendants. However, their unjust enrichment, fraudulent misrepresentation, and civil conspiracy claims must be dismissed for prudential standing reasons. The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision, by dismissing the plaintiffs’ suit in part, and remanding the claims found to have standing back to the district court.
A Flood of Litigation
In a recent article by the Oil and Gas Journal, Anthony Cavender of the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP law firm in Houston said, “Given that the Obama administration has already advocated for tighter regulations related to the environment as a whole, and in particular for tougher policies governing carbon emissions, many plaintiffs may now feel that the time is right to file such suits.”
The article continued with comments from Peter S. Glaser, a partner with Troutman Sanders LLP in Washington saying that, “We are having a cataclysm going on in federal and state tort law as it apples to climate change. This is really extraordinary, and I can’t overstate to you the importance of this.”
Glaser went on to explain the implications of these recent court decisions is that any GHG emitter can be sued. “The really worrisome part of the case in Mississippi was that the plaintiffs were property owners in the Hurricane Katrina area represented by old-time, well-known plaintiff trial lawyers. These people don’t care about global warming, and they don’t care about proper public policy. They want money….”
Truly scary times we are living in. I don’t feel that a lot of these litigants, Congressmen, and judges, are fully cognizant of the potentially dramatic effects there decisions will have on global energy prices. How could anyone fully understand such far reaching implications? Couple these lawsuits with an estimated $100 billion/year in carbon credits U.S. based refiners will be forced to buy under currently proposed legislation – and you thought the economy was bad now…
It feels like the perfect storm is brewing, headed directly for the mouth of the energy sector. I just hope we can weather the storm until alternatives are better understood and implemented.
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[...] But this is exactly what the government wants to do to a corporation’s right to breathe. In a previous article, I mentioned how proposed GHG legislation would require refiners to purchase carbon credits for [...]