Bucks Co. Is First In PA To Sue Oil Companies Over Climate Change

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Bucks County on Monday filed a lawsuit against several major oil companies, charging that they have for decades intentionally deceived the public about their chief product’s role in accelerating the climate crisis.

The Bucks County Commissioners - Democrat Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie and Republican Gene DiGirolamo - announced the lawsuit during a press conference Monday morning in Doylestown. They were joined at the event by the county's legal counsel.

The suit alleges that as a result of the actions taken by the oil companies, Bucks County has suffered and will continue to suffer the catastrophic impacts of climate change, including an emerging pattern of increasingly severe, damaging, and at times deadly weather events.

“In Bucks County we understand it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the environment, and with the public’s support, this administration has established the county as a regional leader on environmental issues,” Commissioner Vice Chair Bob Harvie said. “It is unconscionable that while we were working hard to reduce our impact on the climate crisis, some of the biggest companies in the world were deliberately undercutting those efforts through their deceptive business practices.”

Commissioner Vice Chair Bob Harvie addresses a news conference to announce the county's lawsuit against several major oil companies. Looking on, from left, are Commissioner Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia, Bucks County Solicitor Amy Fitzpatrick and Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo. (Bucks County Government)

Bucks County’s lawsuit, filed Monday in the county’s Court of Common Pleas, specifically names oil companies BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Philips 66, Shell and API as defendants and seeks to hold them financially accountable for the damage the county says their “big tobacco-style campaign of deception has wrought on the environment."

In response to the county's lawsuit, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, counsel for Chevron Corporation, issued the following statement.

“Addressing climate change requires a coordinated international policy response, not meritless local litigation over lawful and essential energy production. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in dismissing a similar New York City lawsuit, ‘such a sprawling case is simply beyond the limits of state law.’”

In its suit, the county says that the companies "have known for decades, with startling precision, that their products would bring about climate change and destabilization. And rather than disclose any of this information, they sought instead to deceive the public about the dangers of their products."

“These companies have known since at least the 1950s that their ways of doing business were having calamitous effects on our planet, and rather than change what they were doing or raise the alarm, they lied to all of us,” said Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo. “The taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for these companies and their greed.”

Bucks County is the first county government in Pennsylvania to sue oil companies over climate change.

The commissioners said that climate change and destabilization has exposed, and will continue to expose, the county and its residents to weather events of growing severity, including storms, heat waves and flooding made worse by the rising tidal waters of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.

Following the model established in suits Bucks County brought against PFAS manufacturers, social media conglomerates and opioid companies, the complaint seeks to "shift the financial burden of the climate crisis from the taxpayers of Bucks County to the companies responsible for creating the crisis.

Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo, left, addresses reporters during a news conference on March 25 as Commissioner Vice Chair Bob Harvie looks on.

“In recent years, we have experienced unprecedented weather events here in Bucks County that have repeatedly put residents and first responders in harm’s way, damaged public and private property and placed undue strain on our infrastructure,” said Commissioner Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia. “We’re already seeing the human and financial tolls of climate change beginning to mount, and if the oil companies’ own data is to be believed, the trend will continue.

“This suit is our tool to recoup costs and fund public works projects like bolstering or replacing bridges, retrofitting county-owned buildings and commencing stormwater management projects, all of which will put us in the best possible position to weather what is certain to come,” she added.

The county is represented in the suit by the law firm DiCello Levitt.