Oregon County Sues BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon for $51B Climate Damages
Sigh. Journalists who discuss a lawsuit without linking to the actual lawsuit in question...<p>The lawsuit appears to be available at <a href="https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Complaint_0.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.co...</a>. Heading straight for end and looking at the causes of action:<p>1. Intentional and negligent creation of public nuisance. The nuisance appears to be extreme climate events, and I'm doubtful that you could actually show sufficient action on the part of the oil companies to link them to the extreme climate events (the standard is probably that you need to show that but for the actions of the companies, those events wouldn't have happened and... yeah, that kind of direct attribution isn't possible).<p>2. Negligence. I mean, this section is a mere page long, and doesn't go into any detail whatsoever, so it's hard to even figure out what is the supposed duty that wasn't done. So... almost certainly going to die on a motion for dismissal.<p>3. Fraud and deceit, in that they covered up the effects of climate change. Except that's not fraud--fraud requires that someone be reliant on the lie to do something. So you'd need to show that, e.g., someone <i>only</i> bought a tank from gas from Exxon <i>because</i> Exxon said climate change didn't exist. I suppose it's possible that's true--there's millions of people in the country after all--but... that's not really something that happens (least of all, anything actually alleged in the complaint, so far as I can thing).<p>4. Trespass. Wildfires caused by climate change constituted trespass. Cute legal theory, but cute legal theories are almost always tossed out of court quickly.<p>So out of four claims, three of them are dead on arrival, and the first one has an uphill fight. And even if they win, the $50 billion for "abate the nuisance" definitely isn't going to happen, and you're looking more at the actual damages which is apparently around $50 million.