WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A federal judge remanded the District of Columbia’s lawsuit against four major oil companies back to one of the district’s own courts, ruling he had no jurisdiction over D.C.’s claims that a corporate “disinformation campaign” had caused “existential” environmental damage to the 68-square-mile urban area.
The remand order joins a number of others as federal judges refuse to hear climate lawsuits based on claims the oil industry misled consumers into purchasing more fossil fuels than they otherwise would have, accelerating human-induced global warming. ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell argued such claims hinged upon federal common law, which governs lawsuits involving interstate pollution, international relations and other uniquely federal questions.
In a Nov. 12 decision, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly rejected that argument, saying the oil companies “identify no question involving any federal statute, regulation, or other federal issue necessarily raised for the District to prevail” under its own consumer-protection laws.
The judge also rejected arguments based upon “federal enclave jurisdiction,” ruling that while the district includes extensive federal properties, D.C. claims the misleading marketing affected consumers across the entire district. The defendants “do not argue that anything especially significant happened in a federal enclave that did not occur elsewhere,” he wrote.
Last year, Judge Kelly remanded an environmental group’s lawsuit back to D.C. Superior Court, and states from Rhode Island to Hawaii have convinced federal judges to remand their cases.
Climate-change plaintiffs suffered early defeats when federal appeals courts in California and New York rejected their lawsuits as raising unjusticeable political questions. They retooled their strategy in part to navigate around those decisions and in part to maintain their lawsuits in state courts, where they can reasonably expect to achieve better results, especially against out-of-state corporations they are asking to pay billions of dollars that would flow to local infrastructure projects.
The issue of jurisdiction will eventually be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.