NEWPORT, R.I. (Legal Newsline) - The judge hearing Rhode Island's climate change case against companies like Chevron and Exxon has responded to their claims he appears to be biased against them.
Superior Court Justice William Carnes issued a short order saying he will not accept as true the viewpoints he previously cited from a United Nations Climate Change Conference and two news articles from The Associated Press. He did this in response to calls by Exxon, Chevron and Shell to strike them from an April decision.
That decision granted Rhode Island the power to conduct limited discovery into the companies’ marketing oil and gas and knowledge about the effects of hydrocarbons on global warming.
In his order, the judge cited Associate Press articles from November about the United Nations Climate Change Conference, referencing “record-breaking floods, heat waves, and storms.”
“Small countries in other parts of world, like Kenya, Tanzania, and the Seychelles, presented that oil companies have benefitted billions in corporate profits at the expense of their climate-related disasters that have caused severe destruction,” the judge wrote. “Rhode Island, the smallest state in the country, is similarly situated to these small countries.”
The oil companies said those statements possibly violated Rhode Island's code of judicial conduct because they referred to information outside the record and disputed claims that are at the core of the case.
"The Court will base any findings in this matter on evidence once it is properly presented in this proceeding," Carnes wrote. "The articles are not evidence."
Rhode Island, like Massachusetts and other government plaintiffs, claims oil companies imposed climate-related damages on the state by failing to tell consumers about the effects of hydrocarbon use on global warming. Plaintiff lawyers tried a number of strategies before hitting upon the idea the companies could be sued for consumer fraud, effectively claiming that drivers and even the state itself was misled into burning gasoline, oil and natural gas.
The case was allowed to proceed in state court after the U.S. Supreme Court in April denied a defense request to move it to federal court, which the oil companies consider fairer. Rhode Island, like several other states and cities, is represented by private lawyers at Sher Edling under a contingency fee contract that will pay it a portion of any proceeds.
The defendants have sought to dismiss the case, in part by arguing the state lacks specific jurisdiction over them to decide whether they caused climate damages to Rhode Island. The judge ordered limited discovery into that question.