DOYLESTOWN – Bucks County has launched litigation against several oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute, charging that the defendants collectively misled the public about the burning of fossil fuels and its catastrophic effect on climate change, the effects of which have damaged County residents.
The County filed suit in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas on March 25 versus BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Chevron, Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute. It has hired private lawyers at DiCello Levitt to pursue the case, one of many that have been filed around the country.
After a years-long debate over whether the cases belonged in state courts (where plaintiffs wanted) and federal (where defendants wanted) ended in favor of the plaintiffs, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether to hear the appeal of the oil industry on the merits of a Hawaii case.
The County maintains that fossil fuel companies have deceived its residents on the cumulative effects of greenhouse gas pollution and led “a disinformation campaign beginning as early as the 1970s to discredit the burgeoning scientific consensus on climate change, deny their own knowledge of climate change-related threats, create doubt in the minds of consumers, the media, teachers and the public about the reality and consequences of burning fossil fuels, and delay the necessary transition to a lower-carbon future.”
The County adds that the defendants’ efforts to market fossil fuels differently as “cleaner”, “emissions-reducing” and the like, while failing to disclose their harmful effects on the climate, is a strategy that “comes straight out of the advertising playbook of Big Tobacco.”
“Defendants also falsely present themselves as corporate leaders in the fight against climate change, claiming to invest substantially in low-emission technologies and zero-emission energy sources, while their business continues to be overwhelmingly focused on fossil fuel production and sales,” the suit says.
The County also charges that “climate change and destabilization has exposed, and will continue to expose, Bucks County and its residents to weather events of growing severity, including storms, heat waves and flooding made worse by the rising tidal waters of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.”
“While defendants have promoted and profited from their deceptive conduct, the County and its residents have spent, and will continue to spend, substantial sums to recover from the effects of climate change. The climate change impacts that the County has faced and will continue to face – including more frequent and intense storms, flooding, storm surge, rising waters in tidal rivers, saltwater intrusion, droughts and extreme heat events – are felt throughout the County, and disproportionately in low-income communities and communities that have historically experienced racial, social, health, and economic inequities. These effects of climate change require large investments to protect the County’s people, infrastructure, environment, and natural areas,” the suit states.
Bucks County commissioners also provided statements on the litigation.
“In recent years, we have experienced unprecedented weather events here in Bucks County that have repeatedly put residents and first responders in harm’s way, damaged public and private property and placed undue strain on our infrastructure. We’re already seeing the human and financial tolls of climate change beginning to mount, and if the oil companies’ own data is to be believed, the trend will continue. This suit is our tool to recoup costs and fund public works projects like bolstering or replacing bridges, retrofitting county-owned buildings and commencing stormwater management projects, all of which will put us in the best possible position to weather what is certain to come,” Commissioner Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia stated.
Conversely, Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform Executive Director Curt Schroder opined that consumers will be detrimentally affected by this action against major oil companies.
“Bucks County and its elected county officials have relied on oil and natural gas for decades to meet their transportation needs and to power their once-mighty steel industrial base. Yet the Commissioners have filed climate change litigation for a situation they helped cause. When can we expect all county-owned vehicles to be electric, or all the county buildings to be powered by renewables? One would expect such actions to follow immediately upon the heels of the action taken by the County leaders,” Schroder said.
“Pennsylvanians already pay a hefty ‘tort tax’ that goes right into the pockets of out-of-state trial lawyers, and this lawsuit will only raise costs even higher for hard-working people across the state – all without advancing real climate solutions. Lawsuits targeting the lawful production of energy are an abuse of our state’s civil justice system and an end-run around the democratic process.”
American Petroleum Institute Senior Vice-President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers also criticized the suit.
“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint. This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources. Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not a patchwork of counties and courts,” Meyers said.
For counts of strict products liability – failure to warn, negligent products liability – failure to warn, negligence, public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, and civil conspiracy, the plaintiff is seeking an unspecified amount of damages in excess of the jurisdictional minimum of the Court, plus interest, costs, attorney’s fees and any other relief that the Court deems just and proper.
The plaintiff is represented by County Solicitor Amy M. Fitzpatrick and Assistant County Solicitor Jaclyn C. Grieser in Doylestown, plus Adam J. Levitt, Daniel Rock Flynn and Anna Claire Skinner of DiCello Levitt, in Chicago.
Bucks County Court of Common Pleas case 2024-01836
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com