Lawyer Jeffrey Simon is renowned for his defense of opioid victims, which has earned them more than $2.7 billion in damages from drug companies. His new target is the oil multinationals.
Today, he is part of the team taking on several oil companies for the damage caused by the June 2021 “heat dome” in the northwestern United States.
According to him, the era of big oil companies taking no responsibility for the climate crisis is over.
“We contend that they disseminated an enormous amount of misinformation to preserve their businesses and their gains,” the Texas lawyer said.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, Oregon, seeks nearly $52 billion.
“The old refrain of the defendants — that the science is uncertain and unproven — will fail,” he said.
Among the companies targeted are the Americans ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, or even the British BP and Shell.
Multnomah County is claiming this sum for past and future damage caused by these multinationals by hiding the negative impact on the climate of fossil fuels.
With this money, he also wants to create a fund to finance the adaptation of infrastructures to heat waves, droughts and future fires.
The lawsuit, filed in June, claims the 2021 “heat dome” caused the deaths of 69 people, resulted in property damage and significant expenditure of public money. At the time, extreme temperatures had been recorded, up to 46.7°C, in a region used to cool temperatures.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA), a scientific group, later determined that the dome would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
Explosion in the number of complaints
These lawsuits are part of a long list of legal actions launched since 2017 in the United States – the world’s largest economy and responsible for around a quarter of cumulative carbon emissions.
More than 40 cities, counties and states have sued fossil fuel industry groups over their climate impact and decades of misinformation, according to the Center for Climate Integrity.
“It’s an important moment,” said Delta Merner, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a committed association.
According to her, the local courts are competent to judge these cases, especially since the effects of global warming differ from one territory to another.
Faced with these attempts to take the States to court, the companies concerned sought to have the procedures failed, arguing that it was up to the Federal State to regulate the issue of CO2 emissions.2and not to the local courts.
In April, the US Supreme Court rejected several appeals seeking to block these proceedings. Files can now begin to be examined on the merits.
Another angle of attack for climate activists: constitutional law.
In Montana, a dozen young people accuse the state of violating their constitutional right to a “clean and healthy environment”. They are not asking for compensation, but that a law allowing state agencies to ignore the climate consequences of permits granted to companies in the fossil fuel sector be declared unconstitutional. Judgment has not yet been rendered.
“Returning to the Courts”
The fossil fuel industry argues that its activities are legal and have boosted economic growth and living standards.
“The Constitution invalidates these baseless new claims, which target an industry and a set of companies whose lawful activities are extremely beneficial to society,” said Theodore Boutrous, legal counsel at Chevron.
These arguments are not new, retorts lawyer Jeffrey Simon. “In the opioid case, we never argued that there wasn’t also an acceptable medical use for prescribed opioids,” he explains, adding that the problem is excessive supply, as with fossil fuels.
According to Multnomah County, internal documents from companies in the industry show that they had knowledge for 50 years of the damage caused by their products, but that they carried out misinformation campaigns that did not allow the localities to make the best choices.
“This is much closer to an arson case than a climate change case,” says the lawyer.
For Michael Burger, executive director at Columbia University of a specialized center for climate change law, laws and policy measures remain the best way to fight the climate crisis.
However, “certainly, policy makers have so far failed to adequately address the problem,” he said. This forces local populations to “rely on the courts to seek justice”.