Second Circuit Rejects New York City Climate Change Case Against Chevron and Others
April 01 2021 - 4:08PM
Business Wire
Unanimous court holds that structure of U.S.
legal system precludes climate tort litigation
Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
unanimously ruled that the City of New York’s climate change
lawsuit against Chevron and a group of other energy producers is
without merit and must be dismissed. The court upheld the federal
district court’s decision that the City’s claims are barred,
holding that municipalities cannot “utilize state tort law to hold
multinational oil companies liable for the damages caused by global
greenhouse gas emissions.”
While recognizing that “[g]lobal warming is one of the greatest
challenges facing humanity today,” the court explained also that
“[g]lobal warming presents a uniquely international problem of
national concern” and “therefore is not well-suited to the
application of state law.” The court rejected the City’s attempt to
regulate and recover damages from the targeted defendants’
“admittedly legal commercial conduct in producing and selling
fossil fuels around the world,” and noted that “every single person
who uses gas and electricity contributes to global warming.” In the
process, the court rejected the City’s attempt to “sidestep” the
“numerous federal statutory regimes and international treaties”
that “provide interlocking frameworks for regulating greenhouse gas
emissions, as well as enforcement mechanisms to ensure that those
regulations are followed.”
“Today’s unanimous opinion by a distinguished panel of judges
appointed by Presidents from both parties explains in clear detail
why the U.S. climate tort lawsuits are meritless, applying
established law as agreed upon by the Justice Department under the
previous two U.S. Administrations,” said Chevron General Counsel R.
Hewitt Pate.
As the court noted, “For over a century, a mostly unbroken
string of cases has applied federal law to disputes involving
interstate air or water pollution.” And it was fitting, the court
concluded, that Congress had, under the Clean Air Act, tasked
expert federal agencies with addressing climate change in this
“technically complex area of environmental law,” rather than
judges, “who lack the scientific, economic, and technological
resources to cope with issues of this order.”
Pate added that “Chevron is accelerating its work on today’s
energy transition, while continuing to supply oil and natural gas
that remains essential for people around the world. We believe that
working with the new U.S. Administration, other governments, and
other honest stakeholders on constructive global solutions is a
better path than meritless, cynical, and wasteful litigation.”
The Court of Appeals’ unanimous decision rejects attempts to
invest courts and “vague and indeterminate” state laws with the
power to override the extensive and carefully crafted network of
federal and international standards that already govern greenhouse
gas emissions and promises to keep decisionmaking in this crucial
area with the proper federal legislative and agency policymakers.
As the Second Circuit explained, “To permit this suit to proceed
under state law would further risk upsetting the careful balance
that has been struck between the prevention of global warming, a
project that necessarily requires national standards and global
participation, on the one hand, and energy production, economic
growth, foreign policy, and national security, on the other.”
The Second Circuit’s opinion today is the first federal
appellate decision on the merits of any of the dozens of
near-identical climate change lawsuits that various states,
counties, and cities around the country have lodged against Chevron
and other energy producers in recent years.
Lead outside counsel for Chevron, Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr.,
noted that “the unanimous opinion exposes—and correctly rejects—the
sleight-of-hand that the plaintiffs have presented to the courts,
in which they seek a money judgment based on worldwide emissions
that they attribute to the defendants’ lawful energy-producing
activities at the same time that they pretend they are not trying
to regulate the energy industry. As the Second Circuit found,
plaintiffs in these baseless cases cannot use ‘artful pleading’ to
escape the fact their claims are federal in nature and legally
barred.”
As the court put it: “[T]he City’s complaint whipsaws between
disavowing any intent to address emissions and identifying such
emissions as the singular source of the City’s harm. But the City
cannot have it both ways.” The court firmly rejected the City’s
attempts to re-characterize its claims as routine state-law
nuisance or misrepresentation torts concerned with local conduct:
“Artful pleading cannot transform the City’s complaint into
anything other than a suit over global greenhouse gas emissions. It
is precisely because fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases—which
collectively ‘exacerbate global warming’—that the City is seeking
damages.” The court thus rejected the City’s attempts to paint its
claims as anything other than an attempt to regulate the national
and indeed international energy industry. “Stripped to its essence,
then, the question before us is whether a nuisance suit seeking to
recover damages for the harms caused by global greenhouse gas
emissions may proceed under New York law. Our answer is simple:
no.”
Chevron Corporation is one of the world’s leading integrated
energy companies. Through its subsidiaries that conduct business
worldwide, the company is involved in virtually every facet of the
energy industry. Chevron explores for, produces and transports
crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets and distributes
transportation fuels and lubricants; manufactures and sells
petrochemicals and additives; generates power; and develops and
deploys technologies that enhance business value in every aspect of
the company’s operations. Chevron is based in San Ramon, Calif.
More information about Chevron is available at www.chevron.com.
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Braden Reddall, +1-925-413-5671
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