This blog recently featured a New Zealand decision in a strike out application in a climate change tort suit. Similar claims have also been a feature of litigation in the State courts in the US in the last few years. Why not in the federal courts? The reason goes back to two previous decisions: the decision of the Supreme Court in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, 131 S. Ct. 2527 (2011) (AEP), and that of the Ninth Circuit in Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., 696 F.3d 849 (9th Cir. 2012), that such actions, at least when they relate to domestic GHG emissions caused by the defendant, are pre-empted by the Clean Air Act.
So, various municipalities have decided to sue in the State courts, claiming damages for what they estimate they will have to spend to mitigate the effects of climate change in future years. The oil majors who have been on the receiving end of these suits have sought removal of the cases to the Federal courts, where they will be dismissed. So far, the position on this is mixed.
The claims by the Cities of New York and Oakland saw their State law claims transferred to the Federal courts because of the interstate nature of the claims. Once there, Oakland sought, unsuccessfully, to distinguish Kivalina and AEP on the grounds that those decisions involved emissions directly from activities of the defendants, rather than by virtue of their sales of fossil fuels to third parties who then burn it and cause GHG emissions. This was not enough to distinguish the cases, and a further attempt, based on the effect of worldwide sales outside the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, also failed, running into the presumption against extraterritoriality. A further reason for dismissing the claims was that they implicated the interests of foreign and domestic governments and that the balancing of interests involved in the analysis of unreasonable interference in a public nuisance suit was best left to governments. New York has appealed the decision, as has Oakland.
By contrast, Baltimore’s tort claims in the State Court of Maryland have managed to stay there. The claims were not based on federal common law and the Clean Air Act did not show congressional intent for it to provide the exclusive cause of action, and indeed the Act contains a savings clause specifically preserving other causes of action. The Defendants then unsuccessfully applied to the Supreme Court for a stay, pending the hearing of their appeal.
On 6 March 2020 the Fourth Circuit declined to transfer the claims to the Federal Courts. They decided that the appeal was limited under 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d) to an appeal based on the Federal Officer Removal statute, one of the eight grounds for transfer argued by the Defendants in the District Court. The Statute, U.S.C. § 1442, authorizes the removal of cases commenced in state court against “any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or of any agency thereof, in an official or individual capacity, for or relating to any act under color of such office…” The Defendants argued that the statute applied because the City “bases liability on activities undertaken at the direction of the federal government”, pointing to three contractual relationships between certain Defendants and the federal government: (1) fuel supply agreements between one Defendant (Citgo) and the Navy Exchange Service Command (“NEXCOM”) from 1988 to 2012; (2) oil and gas leases administered by the Secretary of the Interior under the OCSLA; and (3) a 1944 unit agreement between the predecessor of another Defendant (Chevron) and the U.S. Navy for the joint operation of a strategic petroleum reserve in California known as the Elk Hills Reserve.
The Fourth Circuit held that none of these relationships could justify removal, either because they failed to satisfy the acting-under prong or because they were insufficiently related to Baltimore’s claims for purposes of the nexus prong.
On 31 March 2020 the Defendants submitted a petition for certiorari to the US Supreme Court. on the question whether 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d) permits a court of appeals to review any issue encompassed in a district court’s order remanding a removed case to state court where the removing defendant premised removal in part on the federal-officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442, or the civil-rights removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1443.
In another suit, by San Mateo, the Defendants have appealed against the District Court’s decision not to transfer the suit from the California State Court. The appeal was consolidated with Oakland’s appeal. On 5 February 2020 the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument. They were later informed of subsequent developments in the Baltimore case.
A further success for the municipalities was in the Rhode Island suit, now subject to an appeal to the First Circuit.
It is, therefore, possible that at least one of these tort suits will see the light of trial in the next year or so. When that happens, expect some interesting arguments on causation and damages.
