ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Legal Newsline) - Oil companies sought to dismiss a pair of climate lawsuits by Maryland municipal governments, saying they seek money for global-warming emissions far outside state boundaries and are based in part upon corporate statements protected under free speech laws.
Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil and other oil companies filed motions to dismiss lawsuits by the City of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County this week, arguing the state court lacks jurisdiction over them because they aren’t based in Maryland and the counties are seeking damages for activities that occurred worldwide. Even assuming the oil companies misled consumers in Maryland about the causes of global warming – a claim the they deny – they said the defendants represent a small fraction of the hydrocarbon fuels burned worldwide and their effect on climate change within the state of Maryland is virtually unmeasurable.
Chevron, one of the defendants, also argued the claims should be dismissed under Maryland’s anti-SLAPP (for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law, which protects public speech. In their complaints, the plaintiffs say the oil companies violated Maryland consumer protection laws by engaging in a campaign to “undermine public support for greenhouse gas regulation” by questioning the relationship between fuel use and global warming.
Anne Arundel County’s lawsuit “targets speech designed to persuade the public and government officials to support or oppose regulations, treaties, and other measures affecting energy and climate policy speech that is both of great public concern and protected by the Constitution,” Chevron's motion states. “The very point of this lawsuit is to punish defendants for taking a position on these matters of public concern that conflicts with plaintiff’s preferred policies.”
Annapolis and Anne Arundel County are represented by Sher Edling, a San Francisco law firm that has recruited government plaintiffs nationwide to file climate suits on a contingency-fee basis. The defendants called them “ill-conceived climate change-related actions” that have been repeatedly rejected in court, most notably by federal appeals courts in New York and California.
Sher Edling and its clients retooled their strategy after those losses to focus on violations of state consumer-protection laws, claiming the oil companies lied about global warming and thereby induced consumers to burn more hydrocarbon fuels.
The plaintiffs do not “seek to hold defendants liable for their own emissions,” the companies said, “but rather for production of fossil fuel products that countless third parties combusted and for alleged misrepresentations that supposedly caused those third parties to consume more of those products than they otherwise would have.”
The strategy has been successful in returning these suits to state courts, which presumably are more favorable for local government plaintiffs. In one of the biggest defeats for oil companies, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last year held Baltimore – also represented by Sher Edling -- could sue in state instead of federal court.
Among other arguments, the oil companies said claims based upon their supposedly misleading statements are barred by the statute of limitations. Any suggestion consumers in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County didn’t know about their supposed “campaign of denial” before 2018, the last date for filing suit, “is inconceivable,” the companies said. The plaintiffs themselves say the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming has been publicly known and widely discussed for at least 50 years, the companies said.