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Attorney for manufacturers group calls climate lawsuits 'legal spaghetti'
A new strategy emerges for fossil fuel companies to fight claims for billions in climate damages. An expert called it "laughable."
CLIMATEWIRE — A leading fossil fuel industry advocate unveiled a new strategy Thursday to defeat climate lawsuits against oil companies, calling the cases "legal spaghetti on the wall" that use questionable legal theories to obtain billions in damages.
Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers Accountability Project, focused his criticism on the legal basis of potentially groundbreaking lawsuits filed by state and local governments that aim to hold the industry responsible for damages from climate change.
Goldberg's remarks at an event sponsored by a conservative legal foundation indicate how fossil fuel companies are likely to fight the lawsuits after their original defense, which sought to move the cases from federal court to state court, was rejected by the Supreme Court in a major ruling in April.
In an interview after the event at the Washington Legal Foundation, an environmental law professor dismissed Goldberg's comments as part of an ongoing public relations campaign aimed at minimizing the industry's role in causing global warming.
State and local governments are seeking to collect billions in damages from major oil companies as compensation for the additional costs they have incurred recovering from major disasters, which in some cases have been intensified by climate change.
As the cases have played out for years, a public relations battle also has ensued, with Goldberg leading the industry's campaign.
On Thursday, Goldberg portrayed the lawsuits as an obstacle to fighting climate change by distracting companies from developing ways to expedite a transition to cleaner energy.
“This is not an effective use of resources in trying to get things done and addressing the issues that climate change presents to us,” Goldberg said. “The litigation is not going to solve climate change."
Another panelist, Sarah Hunt, president of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, said oil companies could invest in new technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Karen Sokol, an environmental law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans, assailed the panelist comments in an interview after the event.
"The notion that the fossil fuel industry is critical to a climate response is laughable,” Sokol said.
Sokol noted that the oil industry for decades engaged in public relations campaign to conceal and disparage their own research that showed burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming. Goldberg's remarks Thursday are part of a messaging campaign to build public support for the fossil fuel industry, Sokol said.
“If you get this into the public-information space sufficiently, potential jurors would hear it,” Sokol said. “This is to put disinformation out there about the suits before they have been litigated.”
The lawsuits have a solid legal basis in state common law and deceptive-marketing laws, which are written in general terms to allow various harms to be alleged by plaintiffs, Sokol said in response to Goldberg's "legal spaghetti" quip.
If the lawsuits contained allegations without a solid legal or factual basis, the oil companies could have convinced a judge to dismiss them long ago, Sokol added.
