RICHMOND, Va. (Legal Newsline) – Plaintiff lawyers with possibly huge government contracts scored a major victory Thursday after convincing federal judges climate change lawsuits that would change the way the world’s oil companies do business involve mostly state law claims.
Despite pleas from defendants like Exxon, BP and Chevron that Baltimore’s case would regulate greenhouse gases in more places than just Maryland, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled the private lawyers representing Baltimore city and county crafted their complaint to avoid federal jurisdiction.
Baltimore’s case is one of many filed around the country and previously reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave defendants a partial victory when it told the Fourth Circuit to consider its original order remanding the case to state court.
Thursday’s decision written by Judge Henry Floyd rejected the eight arguments for federal jurisdiction put forth by 26 oil and gas companies. They claimed the state law claims were preempted by federal laws like the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
“Here, Baltimore’s allegations and injuries are not confined to Defendant’s fossil-fuel activities on the (Outer Continental Shelf,” Floyd wrote.
“Defendants are also being sued for unlawfully marketing, promoting and ultimately selling their fossil-fuel products, which includes their collective failure to warn the public of the known dangers associated with their fossil-fuel products.
“Defendants’ marketing practices, which led to increased consumption of their fossil-fuel products and then climate change, are far removed from their OCS activities and their tort liability. In other words, irrespective of Defendant’s activities on the OCS, Baltimore’s injuries still exist as a result of that distinct marketing conduct.”
Defendants called Baltimore’s arguments “interstate-pollution claims” but Floyd said he and the two other judges hearing the case “resoundingly agree” with Baltimore’s insistence its case is governed by state law.
“(W)e note that Baltimore’s complaint never expressly asserts any claim under federal common law,” he wrote.
“And Defendants do not contest otherwise. Because Baltimore’s complaint does not propose a new federal cause of action, never alleges an existing federal common law claim, and only brings claims originating under Maryland, the (federal) district court never had subject-matter jurisdiction under the well-pleaded complaint rule.”
Since early success getting New York’s and San Francisco’s complaints dismissed by federal judges, plaintiffs have achieved success getting their cases back to state court – where they stand a better a chance of success. The Ninth Circuit even reversed the dismissal of San Francisco’s case and sent it to state court.
The litigation is the brainchild of private firms like Sher Edling, environmental advocates like former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and government officials.
They bring their cases under state public nuisance laws, as well as state consumer protection statutes, even though the ramifications of having the oil industry pay to upgrade infrastructures to combat climate change will certainly be felt outside of their jurisdictions.
A Delaware federal judge in that state’s case ruled “Federal jurisdiction is not created by predictions about extra-judicial realities that may (or may not) result from a state court resolving a claim that raises solely matters of state law.”
Defendants in the Baltimore case will likely ask for a rehearing of the issue before the entire roster of Fourth Circuit of judges before again appealing to the Supreme Court.