Oakland Lawsuit Over Climate Change Dismissed

SAN FRANCISCO, CA —A federal judge in San Francisco has dismissed a pair of climate change lawsuits filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco against five oil companies.

The two cities claimed San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. and four other companies created a public nuisance by producing and promoting oil and natural gas fuels while knowing that they lead to global warming and sea
level rise.

The lawsuit asked for compensation, possibly in the billions of dollars, to build seawalls and other protections from rising seas.

In a ruling issued on Monday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said he agrees with the scientific consensus that global warming is real and is increasing.

But he dismissed the lawsuits on the ground that addressing the problem is best left to the executive and legislative branches of government.

"The dangers raised in the complaints are very real. But those dangers are worldwide. Their causes are worldwide. The benefits of fossil fuels are worldwide," Alsup wrote.

"The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case," he said.

In addition to Chevron, the companies sued were Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips, BP PLC, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. The firms are the five largest investor-owned, as opposed to government-owned, oil companies in the world.

Chevron Vice President and General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate said in a statement, "Reliable, affordable energy is not a public nuisance but a public necessity. Tackling the difficult international policy issues of climate change requires honest and constructive discussion."

National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons stated, "From the moment these baseless lawsuits were filed, we have argued that the courtroom was not the proper venue to address this global
challenge."

Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., said, "While we disagree with Judge Alsup's conclusion, we agree with him that the magnitude of the climate change problem is indeed
vast and urgent.

"Fossil fuel companies are not neutral actors simply providing a product everyone demands," Kimmell contended in a statement.

"For decades, they marketed products that they knew to be harmful while sowing doubt about those harms and blocking policies to address those harms and develop alternatives," he alleged.

Oakland and San Francisco originally filed their lawsuits in September in Alameda County and San Francisco superior courts, but the cases were moved to federal court at the companies' request.

Similar lawsuits by San Mateo, Marin and Santa Cruz counties, the cities of Santa Cruz and Richmond, the city of New York and several other counties and cities nationwide are pending in various courts.

In some cases, the two sides are disputing whether the lawsuit should be heard in federal or state court. In California, the state public nuisance law is considered to be stronger than federal public nuisance law.

— Bay City News; Image via Shutterstock