TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) - A New Jersey state court judge refuses to be the one who sets international energy standards and has thrown out a climate change lawsuit brought by the state.
Attorney General Matthew Platkin's case is one of dozens around the country making state law claims under consumer protection and public nuisance laws, and Mercer County Superior Court judge Douglas Hurd on Feb. 5 tossed it out of court.
Hurd becomes the fifth state court judge to grant motions to dismiss by companies like Chevron and Exxon, targeted by private lawyers who earned contingency fee contracts from government officials. Platkin hired lawyers at Sher Edling for his 200-page 2022 lawsuit.
"This court's decision is reliant upon and consistent with both federal and state courts across the country that have rejected the availability of state tort law in the climate change context," Judge Hurd wrote.
"This court agrees that the logic and reasoning of those decisions compel dismissal of claims seeking damages by transboundary emissions."
Hurd joins two state judges in Maryland, one in Delaware and one in New York in throwing out this type of case. His is the third 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.
The cases 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. The Second Circuit affirmed the New York dismissal.
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.
Theodore Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher represents Chevron says the New Jersey decision joins a "nearly unanimous consensus."
These types of claims are precluded and preempted by federal law and must be dismissed under clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent. As the Court rightly held, ‘the leading and most persuasive case supporting dismissal is the Second Circuit decision in City of New York. There, the federal appeals court rejected the availability of state tort law in the climate change context.’”
Hurd says the fundamental principles of federalism in the U.S. Constitution show that state law cannot operate in areas of uniquely federal interests.
"The Hawai’i Supreme Court’s decision in City & County of Honolulu v. Sunoco is not persuasive to this court because it does not address this critical point," he wrote.
"And that point being that ‘state law does not suddenly become presumptively competent to address issues that demand a unified federal standard simply because Congress saw fit to displace a federal court-made standard with a legislative one,'" he added, citing the New York decision.