A number of lawsuits are currently in process aimed at holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for climate change.
The main approaches so far fall into two buckets – either that the fossil industry spread climate disinformation and created uncertainty about the issue, or those that hold the industry directly responsible for climate impacts.
The newest suit by the State of Michigan takes a novel approach, one based on the industry’s anti-competitive practices, and the subsequent costs to consumers.
A new lawsuit against oil giants over their role in climate change is pursuing a novel strategy that may ring a bell. It’s focusing on high prices and affordability.
The federal antitrust lawsuit, filed Friday by Michigan’s attorney general, accuses the companies of creating a “cartel” and raising costs for people in the state by colluding to stifle renewables, such as wind and solar power, and to suppress information about the dangers of global warming.
“Michigan is facing an energy affordability crisis as our home energy costs skyrocket and consumers are left without affordable options for transportation,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “These out-of-control costs are not the result of natural economic inflation, but due to the greed of these corporations who prioritized their own profit and marketplace dominance over competition and consumer savings.” The lawsuit comes at a time when inflation and affordability are rising political and economic concerns in the country.
The use of antitrust law is notable. Over the past decade, roughly three dozen state and local governments have filed more straightforward lawsuits against oil companies, seeking damages for the effects of climate change or citing consumer protection laws, mostly in state courts. Only one other suit has made antitrust claims, but it took a different approach than Michigan did. (That lawsuit was dismissed and an appeal is pending.)
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There’s a nice summary of active lawsuits from a Law firm here, and I’ll excerpt two of their examples.
So far, there continues to be a strong appetite for climate change litigation. The use of litigation as a form of protest by climate activist groups, a focus on human rights violations in the context of climate change, and pressuring of fossil fuel companies to develop climate strategies continue to emerge as important trends in litigation strategies and in the types of argument being adopted by litigants.3
As at November 2020, the total number of climate change cases filed to date has reached over 1,650,4up from about 1,444 as at February this year. Cases have now been filed in all six continents and in at least 36 countries, in addition to cases brought in regional or international courts or commissions. The vast majority of these cases continue to be commenced in the United States (US), followed by Australia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, and Spain.
State of Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute et al
In June 2020, the Attorney General for the State of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and Flint Hills Resources on the basis of internal documents dating back to the 1970s and 1980s which allegedly confirm that the companies “well understood the devastating effects that their products would cause to the climate”.
The Attorney General alleges, amongst other things, that the defendants have profited from “avoiding the consequences and costs of dealing with global warming” and that they deliberately undermined “the science of climate change, purposefully downplaying the role that the purchase and consumption of their products played in causing climate change”.
The lawsuit includes claims for fraud, failure to warn, and multiple separate violations of Minnesota Statutes that prohibit consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false statements in advertising. The Attorney General is seeking damages for alleged harms suffered by Minnesotans and orders that the companies fund a corrective public education campaign on the issue of climate change.
The case is currently the subject of jurisdictional arguments as to whether it should be heard in the Federal Court.
State of Delaware v BP America Inc et al
In September 2020, the Delaware Attorney General filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Delaware against 31 fossil fuel companies as well as the American Petroleum Institute. The complaint alleges that the named companies have known the climate change impacts of fossil fuels, and seeks financial compensation under the Consumer Fraud Act. In addition to past deceit, the complaint is also focussed on the current practices of these companies, including ongoing “Greenwashing Campaigns.”
A second cause of action is trespass, by causing “floodwaters, extreme precipitation, saltwater encroachment, and other materials to enter the State’s real property” as a result of the use of the defendants’ fossil fuel products. This focus on flooding is of particular relevance to Delaware, which has the lowest average elevation of the United States and will, according to the complaint, cause the State to incur substantial costs to prevent and rectify the damage of rising sea levels.
The case is currently the subject of jurisdictional arguments as to whether it should be heard in the Federal or State Court.
The current case filed by Michigan is a bit a new wrinkle, because it takes an anti-trust approach, alleging the Big Fossil acted as a cartel to suppress competition, resulting in additional costs to consumers, damage to the state’s economy, and ultimately a competitive disadvantage, for instance to the state’s important auto industry.
- But for decades, Defendants have conspired with each other to forestall
meaningful competition from renewable energy and maintain their dominance in the energy market. They have done so as a cartel, agreeing to reduce the
production and distribution of electricity from renewable sources and to restrain the emergence of electric vehicles (EV) and renewable primary energy technologies in the United States. To achieve this end, they have abandoned renewable energy projects, used patent litigation to hinder rivals, suppressed information concerning the hidden costs of fossil fuels and viability of alternatives, infiltrated and knowingly misdirected information-producing institutions, surveilled and intimidated watchdogs and public officials, and used trade associations to coordinate market-wide efforts to divert capital expenditures away from renewable energy—all to further one of the most successful antitrust conspiracies in United States history. - Defendants’ collusion traces back to approximately 1980, when their
own research concluded that continued reliance on fossil fuels would impose
staggeringly high and stunningly destructive negative externalities on consumers nationwide, including in Michigan. Negative externalities are external costs in the form of environmental harms, economic harms, and costs incurred to adapt to or mitigate those harms. Defendants were aware that clean energy alternatives were feasible and inevitable, and emergence of these alternatives would increase competition in the transportation and primary energy markets, reducing Defendants’ market share and the dominance of those markets with their fossil fuel products.
Exxon took an early leading role in the conspiracy. Its scientists concluded that to avoid the most deadly and destructive negative externalities,
including climate impacts, clean energy would need to supply at least fifty percent of global energy by 2010. But rather than act on these findings to compete in developing superior clean energy technologies and achieving market penetration, Exxon and the other Defendants chose to collude to protect fossil fuels’ dominance.
The landmark lawsuit, filed Friday morning in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, seeks unspecified financial compensation and forfeiture of profits from oil giants BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and their subsidiaries, as well as the industry lobbying group American Petroleum Institute.
Rather than a suit about environmental harm, “at the heart, this is an energy affordability case,” Nessel said in an interview with Bridge Michigan.
Michiganders pay among the nation’s highest residential energy rates — costs Nessel said “could have been prevented had the fossil fuel cartel not worked together to postpone innovation and to eliminate cost-effective alternatives.”
Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel for the American Petroleum Institute, criticized Nessel’s new suit. In a statement provided to Bridge, he called it part of “a coordinated campaign against an industry that powers everyday life, drives America’s economy, and is actively reducing emissions.”
With the suit, Michigan joins dozens of cities and states that have sued oil corporations, alleging they used illegal tactics to maintain market dominance and conceal the risks of their products.
Petroleum industry representatives have begun lobbying Congress for legal immunity, calling such lawsuits a waste of taxpayer resources.
Wall Street Journal, March 22 2025:
Now that a pro-fossil-fuel president is in the White House, the oil industry is pushing to make some of its biggest legal headaches go away.
Oil-and-gas executives raised their concerns about recent state laws that will fine them for contributing to greenhouse-gas emissions, at a White House meeting Wednesday with President Trump. They also discussed the dozens of climate lawsuitsfiled by state and local governments against Exxon Mobil Chevron, Shell and others, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump appeared to agree with the industry that the states’ actions had the potential to undermine his energy-dominance agenda and signaled he would consider ways his administration could help the industry, the people said. The chief executives of Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Hess were among those in attendance at the meeting.
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One approach the White House took through the Department of Justice was to attempt to block Michigan, and other states like it, from filing such suits.
This week, a judge threw that case out, clearing the way for the Michigan case.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit President Donald Trump’sadministration had filed that sought to block the state of Michigan from suing major oil companies in an attempt to hold them responsible for the harms of climate change.
U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering in Grand Rapids tossed the U.S. Department of Justice’s case on Saturday, a day after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, filed a lawsuitaccusing members of the fossil fuel industry of colluding to forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy.
Beckering’s ruling, opens new tab did not reference the antitrust case the state filed on Friday. But Nessel’s office has said the case stemmed from Michigan’s efforts to investigate “the fossil fuel industry’s persistent cover-up and deception about climate change.”
Beckering said the Justice Department’s case was “too speculative,” as it relied on unspecified claims that Michigan might file against unspecified non-parties at some unknown point that could ultimately be preempted by federal law.
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The industry knows it is only a matter of time before the dam breaks, and they, like the tobacco industry before them, are held responsible for their actions.