ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Legal Newsline) - Another state court judge has thrown out a climate change lawsuit brought against the fossil fuel industry by government officials who have hired private lawyers hoping for jackpots.
Judge Steven Platt, of the circuit court in Anne Arundel County in Maryland, last week granted the motion to dismiss of defendants like BP, Chevron and Exxon. Platt is now the second Maryland judge to throw out a climate case, joining a colleague in Baltimore.
Platt's ruling is a blow to Anne Arundel County and the City of Annapolis, which hired Sher Edling to file suit in April 2021. The case seeks money from Big Oil to fund infrastructure projects designed to handle the effects of climate change.
“The Court’s decision joins the growing and nearly unanimous consensus, among both federal and states courts across the country, that these types of claims are precluded and preempted by federal law and must be dismissed under clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent," said Ted Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, which represents Chevron.
Platt previously denied a motion to dismiss but changed his mind in his Jan. 23 order. Judge Videtta Brown's ruling last year was particularly persuasive for him.
"This Court holds that the U.S. Constitution's federal structure does not allow the application of state court claims like those presented in the instant cases," Platt wrote.
"The States such as Plaintiffs here... can participate in the efforts to limit emissions collaboratively, but not in the form of litigation... If states and municipalities [or] even private parties are dissatisfied with the federal rulemaking or the outcome of cases, they may seek federal court review."
It is the second dismissal since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the issue, which kept Honolulu's case going past the motion-to-dismiss stage. A judge in New York said New York City's case wasn't worth putting in front of a jury.
Around the country, the oil industry faces dozens of these cases, which allege consumers would not have burned as many fossil fuels as they did had companies been more forthright about their effects.
The litigation started with a battle over where the cases should be heard. Defendants wanted them in federal court to bolster their defense, and that strategy resulted in federal judges in California and New York granting motions to dismiss.
But the Supreme Court ultimately ruled the lawsuits belonged in various state courts because plaintiff lawyers had crafted their cases to make state law claims under consumer protection statutes and for public nuisance.
At issue is whether state court judges should have the power to essentially impact the international energy market. Twenty Republican state attorneys general argued the Hawaii case involves questions of interstate and international law that can only be decided by Congress or in federal courts.
Judge Brown, in the Baltimore case, said the litigation goes beyond the limits of Maryland law, or whatever states other cases are filed in. Most municipalities and states that have filed suit are near oceans, though Boulder, Colo., has also sued.
Early in 2024, Delaware Superior Court judge Mary Johnston dismissed claims based on the state's consumer-protection law, saying allegations oil companies hid their knowledge of climate effects were well before the five-year statute of limitations.
Citing the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's opinion in Connecticut's case against American Electric Power, Platt noted claims under the Clean Air Act must go through the Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators first.
Expert agencies are "better equipped to do the job than federal judges," Ginsburg wrote.
Platt added, "That judgment about untrained federal judges' comparative ability to master complex, scientific, economic and technological issues and balance competing and complex interests certainly applies as well to state court judges..."