Audrey Streb
Contributor
A judge dismissed a Pennsylvania county lawsuit alleging climate change-related harm against major oil and gas companies late on Friday.
Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Stephen Corr dismissed the county’s lawsuit against energy companies including Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, ruling that the court lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case. The decision is one of several recent dismissals of climate nuisance lawsuits filed by Democratic-leaning cities and states seeking major damages from energy companies.
“Today we join a growing chorus of state and federal courts across the United States, singing from the same hymnal, in concluding that the claims raised by Bucks County are not judiciable by any court in Pennsylvania,” Corr wrote in the dismissal. (RELATED: Law Firms Stand To Make Killing From Blue Cities’ Climate Lawsuits Against Energy Giants)
Bucks County filed the lawsuit in March 2024 and alleged that numerous companies were aware of the climate impacts of fuel products as they engaged in a campaign to mislead the public. The dismissed lawsuit argued that the companies deceived consumers into thinking that their fossil fuel products were safe, which led to their continued use that then further exacerbated the effects of climate change.
“We agree with the Defendants that Bucks County fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because Pennsylvania cannot apply its own laws to claims dealing with air in its ambient or interstate aspects, and, therefore, we are compelled to dismiss this lawsuit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” the dismissal states. “We join many other state and federal courts in finding that claims raised by Bucks County are solely within the province of federal law.”
Bucks County has seen several flash floods in recent years, and the county sought damages in the suit to cover costs for repairs to flood-damaged infrastructure, among other things.
“A simple reading of the complaint proves that Bucks County is truly seeking redress for harm caused by climate change, a global phenomenon caused by the emission of greenhouse gases in every nation in the world,” the dismissal states. Critics of these lawsuits have noted this point for years.
“Judge Corr’s decision was right because the fossil fuel companies were abiding by the law,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the Director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment for the Heritage Foundation wrote in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Environmentalists are trying to use courts to do climate policy because they can’t get their way through a majority of elected officials in the federal or state legislatures. But the way to channel this problem, if there is one, is through laws. If environmentalists can’t get a law passed, they try to get a crackpot judge to agree with them.”
In addition to the jurisdictional issue, Corr also expressed “concern about the manner in which the commissioners went about hiring counsel and filing this lawsuit,” finding that their conduct “violated the spirit of Pennsylvania’s open government act,” known as the Sunshine Act.
“The court … got it right when it expressed ‘concern about the manner in which the Commissioners went about hiring counsel and filing this lawsuit,’ and found that ‘the conduct of the Commissioners violated the spirit of’ Pennsylvania’s open government act,” counsel for Chevron Corporation Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP said in a statement to the DCNF.
The county’s legal counsel, DiCello Levitt, was hired on a contingent basis, meaning that the county government essentially paid no upfront costs for the firm’s services, but the firm would secure a certain percentage of any funds recovered in a settlement. Several other Democratic-leaning jurisdictions that have filed similar lawsuits also hired law firms to assist with their climate litigation under similar contractual arrangements.
At a hearing in March, attorneys representing the companies argued that Bucks County lacked legal standing to bring the claims to court.
“It’s not about solving climate change. It’s about Bucks County surviving it,” an attorney for the county Dan Flynn argued, comparing the case to major tobacco company cases in the hearing.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 8 instructing his administration to investigate state-level attempts to sue or otherwise extract massive payouts from energy companies in the name of climate change. Last month, the Trump administration filed lawsuits against Michigan and Hawaii in an attempt to block the states from seeking damages in court against fossil fuel companies for alleged environmental harm, and days later, Puerto Rico dropped one of its similar lawsuits against major oil and gas companies.
Bucks County officials, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and DiCello Levitt did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment in time for publication.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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No Sher Edling?
See the “Another Cut and Paste Lawsuit: Pennsylvania Bucks County v. BP PLC, et al.” link up above in the WUWT “Related” section. That was my dissection of the lawsuit in which I detailed how Bucks County was little more than a plagiarized copy of the months-earlier-filed Chicago v BP lawsuit that was handled by the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling. If the one Puerto Rico law firm was in huge trouble (as reported just over a month ago) for plagiarizing another Puerto Rico firm’s lawsuit against Exxon, I’d think this was also a potential problem for Bucks County …… but my elemental point in that dissection was how the accusations of skeptic scientists being paid by Big Oil was based on literally worthless ‘industry docs.’
Given that it would be nearly impossible, given professional courtesy among lawyers, a RICO case could be made.
Now all that required is for the complainant to be compelled to pay cost for bringing a vexatious suit.
Perhaps Oil Companies should look for a viable argument to sue Cities and States.
Like States/Cities allowing Oil Co(s) to sell their product within the state, while State and City vehicles use oil products themselves and still suing Oil.
Defence is the best form of attack. The only reason Bell Helmet Company is still in business is that they aggressively sued back when spurious cases were brought against them, often from wearing another make of helmet.
And another lawfare suit becomes a no show in court. It will take SCOTUS to either make a decision or say they don’t have the expertise and leave the question in limbo. I hope the courts and defense are charging the litigants in the end for the time and expertise expended.
Time to equate Nuisance Lawsuits with Frivolous Lawsuits and start charging (fining) litigants for filing frivolous lawsuits especially in multiple jurisdictions
Plain old loser pays would go a long ways towards solving the problem. It would be even better if it were all costs — travel expenses, lost wages, etc etc etc, not just attorney fees.
There is a variant of loser pays that I find interesting. If the defendant offers a settlement, and that settlement is turned down. Then if the jury comes up with a judgement that is equal to or less than the offered settlement, then the plaintiff (in this case, the winner) has to pay all costs that were incurred after the settlement was offered.
In this case, since a valid offer was on the table, it was the plaintiff who was being unreasonable and forced costs on everyone.
In such a situation, I would be willing to consider include the costs of the court system itself to the settlement.
Yes, I like that. How well it encourages common sense settling, I have never seen discussed, but it seems like it ought to.
Where is Solomon when you need him?
Can’t understand why grounds for chucking it out are legalistic rather than it’s obvious baxxs?
double ell
Courts cannot judge science, not their area. They can judge legal.
And the ‘legal’ part of these is whether plaintiffs attorneys offered provable evidence to support their claims that skeptic climate scientists were paid to participate in industry-orchestrated ‘disinformation campaigns.’ My dissections of these lawsuits show how the central ‘evidence’ for the claims is totally without merit.
Having done deep dives on several legal issues, I can agree without review that the claims were bogus.
Several years back some researchers employed by oil companies published their paper that demonstrated that CO2 and global warming were unrelated to the degree claimed.
The reaction was not to point out errors in the report. The reaction was an outcry that those scientists should be fired! That was my tipping point. I became a pragmatic skeptic.
I fail to understand why Chevron, Shell etc. do not warn Oil Distributors that they will deny them any oil sales IF they sell to any outlet in Pennsylvania (or any other like state) in the future. See how they go!
But, do so with a court injunction so they are not liable for the consequences. Just obeying the law, sir. Court ordered.
The problem is that unless all the oil companies agree to do this, then the company that doesn’t is going to make a huge profit.
If all the companies do agree to do this, then that is collusion, and it’s illegal.
Your idea sounds great in theory, but there is no way to implement it.
Consider a couple of things. First is the domino theory. One doing so inspires another, without collusion. Second is the short term pain from the shortages and price increases that result. It is not desired to make this permanent, but rather to deliver a message, akin to suffering a blackout.
In related news, the great myth of declining hydrocarbon production (ever increasing costs) is being put to the test:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/7-Energy-Winners-in-a-Market-Going-Nowhere.html
A judge in BUCKS county did this? I can see it happening in Butler, Armstrong, Venango or Clarion, maybe even Beaver. Out east those jackasses believe they have authority over EVERYTHING.
I wish the oil companies would simply decline to supply in states that insist on suing them frivolously.
“It’s not about solving climate change. It’s about Bucks County surviving it,”
And now it’s Bucks County surviving the holes in their budgets from which the attorney fees were taken. Or were the lawyers working on a contingency basis?
According to the article, they were working on contingency.
Besides the other criticisms of the world’s second oldest profession, some are addicted to gambling.
It’s worth repeating.
Most new major flooding is because of changes within individual watersheds.
New roads, housing, removal of forested areas,grasslands, and improper drainage management are usually the real issues.
A small child in the 1950s, I was warned of the harmful effects of smoking, forbidden to me by my parents… both smokers. As I grew up I heard cigarettes referred to as “gaspers”, “coffin nails”, “cancer sticks”. I recall too details of Iab experiments on beagles and rabbits forced to inhale tobacco smoke, and the adverse publicity this got because of animal cruelty. Also the clinical results proving the connexion between smoking and disease. People carried on smoking. Particularly heavy smokers (in the UK) were doctors and nurses.
The wider public, even children, were well aware of the harm from smoking.
Yet in the USA tobacco companies were sued successfully with ridiculous claims they had hidden the true dangers from an unsuspecting public, and idiot juries awarded enormous pay-outs. We have these to thank for the momentum the climate change nonsense has achieved – see! deniers are just like the tobacco companies – and the lawsuits against fossil fuel companies which fortunately, so far, have got nowhere.
Across The Pond, I had a similar experience about the same time. As a teenager, I often tried to get my father to stop smoking. His rationalization for his addictive behavior was that all scientists had proven was that rabbits shouldn’t smoke. While he was literally right, he died at 63 of metastatic bladder cancer, which the doctors blamed on smoking. I’ve outlived him by 20-years and probably have a few more years to go. I don’t know whether one should blame the addicted, the supplier, or both. But, the use of fossil fuels is not a biological addiction and there are clear benefits that justify using them, not the least of which is greater longevity and a higher standard of living. I suspect that the alarmists, should they get what they are asking for, would be the first to die off in a world of shortages.
“Bucks County…alleged that numerous companies were aware of the climate impacts of fuel products”
Well then it would appear that Bucks County were and are also well aware of “the climate impacts of fuel products”, but they keep using them anyway. Seems to me on that basis the citizens of Bucks County should be able to sue Bucks County for climate related harm.
Federal experts say Bucks County is out of drought. State experts say Bucks County is on “drought watch.”
Weird philosophically.
If you throw out all the politics, the prosecution wants either:
1) A small number of people to get money for everybody in the world suffering, but if the check clears then keep doing that,
or,
2) A large number of people to freeze to death or relocate immediately because the technology they use to stay warm in winter causes everybody in the world to suffer,