JERSEY CITY, N.J. (Legal Newsline) - Now that a years-long battle over where climate-change lawsuits brought by states and cities that teamed with private lawyers should be heard is over, the major corporations being sued are making their arguments they should be tossed.
Defendants like Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron filed a motion to dismiss July 7 in New Jersey's Hudson County Superior Court, arguing the state-law claims made by the City of Hoboken are preempted by the federal Clean Air Act.
The defendants make other claims for dismissal now that it has been determined plaintiffs pled their cases in a manner that avoids federal court jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court in April declined to hear defendants' arguments that the cases, which are filed by government officials and contingency-fee lawyers from Hawaii to the East Coast, should be heard in federal courts.
The lawsuits seek compensation for the costs of climate change-related infrastructure upgrades.
"While the state-law labels Plaintiff attaches to its claims may be familiar, the substance and reach of the claims are extraordinary," the defendants' motion says.
"Plaintiff seeks to regulate the nationwide - and even worldwide - marketing and distribution of lawful products on which billions of people outside of Hoboken, and New Jersey, rely to hear their homes, power their hospitals and schools, produce and transport their food, and manufacture countless items essential to the safety, wellbeing, and advancement of modern society - in the process distorting the scope and content of state tort law beyond recognition."
Among the arguments made in the motion are:
-Hoboken's claims are duplicative of a "nearly identical" suit brought by the State of New Jersey;
-State law can't apply because the U.S. Constitution prevents states from using their own laws to resolve disputes involving out-of-state conduct;
-Precedent involving the Clean Water act that "precludes a court from applying the law of an affected state against an out-of-state source leads to the preemption of Hoboken's claims under the Clean Air Act;
-Hoboken's suit raises questions of public policy that can't be addressed by courts undeer the political question doctrine - "Plaintiff's claims lack the judicially discoverable and manageable standards required to ensure that the Court does not overstep its constitutional bounds and touch upon issues - including how to balance environmental interests with interests of economic growth, energy independence and national security - that have been committed to the political branches;"
-Claims of deception to conceal risks of climate change are barred by the statute of limitations because the most recent alleged statement was made 14 years before the complaint was filed;
-State-law claims for nuisance, trespass and negligence are subsumed by the state's Product Liability Act; and
-New Jersey does not recognize nuisances allegedly attributable to products like fossil fuels, citing a 2007 ruling in failed lead paint litigation.
"In that case, and dispositive here, the Supreme Court declined to allow a public nuisance claim based on the promotion and sale of lead pigment, notwithstanding the harmful effects of lead poisoning, because doing so would 'stretch the concept of public nuisance far beyond recognition and would create a new and entirely unbounded tort antithetical to the meaning and inherent theoretical limitations of the tort of public nuisance,'" the motion says.