Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp.

Last updated

Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corporation, et al.
US DC NorCal.svg
Court United States District Court for the Northern District of California
Full case nameNative Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corporation, et al.
DecidedSeptember 30, 2009
Docket nos. 4:08-cv-01138
CitationsComer v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., et al.
Holding
Kivalina claims posed non-justiciable political questions and that the plaintiffs "otherwise lack[ed] standing under Article III of the United States Constitution."
Court membership
Judge sitting Saundra Brown Armstrong

Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., No. 4:08-cv-01138 (N.D. Cal.), was a lawsuit filed on February 26, 2008, in a United States district court. The suit, based on the common law theory of nuisance, claims monetary damages from the energy industry for the destruction of Kivalina, Alaska by flooding caused by climate change. The damage estimates made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Government Accountability Office are placed between $95 million and $400 million. This lawsuit is an example of greenhouse gas emission liability. [1]

Contents

The suit was dismissed by the United States district court on September 30, 2009, on the grounds that regulating greenhouse emissions was a political rather than a legal issue and one that needed to be resolved by Congress and the Administration rather than by courts. [2] An appeal was filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in November 2009. [3] In September 2012, the panel of appeals judges decided not to reinstate the case. [4] The city appealed the court of appeals decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and on May 20, 2013 the Supreme Court justices decided not hear the case, effectively ending the city's legal claim. [5]

Parties

Plaintiffs

Attorneys

Defendants

Village issue

Kivalina is a traditional Iñupiat community of about 390 people and is located about 625 miles northwest of Anchorage. It is built on an 8-mile barrier reef between the Kivalina River and the Chukchi Sea. [6]

Sea ice historically protected the village, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But the ice is forming later and melting sooner because of higher temperatures, and that has left it unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that pummel coastal communities. [6]

The village is being wiped out by global warming and needs to move urgently before it is destroyed and the residents become global warming refugees", Kivalina's attorney, Matt Pawa of suburban Boston said. "It's battered by winter storms and if residents don't get some money to move, the village will cease to exist. [6]

In 1953 the size of the village was roughly 54 acres but due to accelerating erosion activity, the village is currently at 27 acres. [7] Due to the dramatic loss of land, Kivalina residents chose a relocation site, an area known as Kiniktuuraq, about two miles southeast of the current location. [6] Before relocating, Kivalina residents are finding out that the new site may be prone to flooding. [7] It has not been mentioned that the flooding will be attributed to climate change in the case.

Overview

According to an attorney of Kivalina, Matt Pawa, Kivalina v. ExxonMobil has two chief aims. The first is to recover "monetary damages for defendants' past and ongoing contributions to global warming"; the second, to recover "damages caused by certain defendants' acts in furthering a conspiracy to suppress the awareness of the link between these emissions and global warming". [8]

The lawsuit accuses some of the defendants of a conspiracy to mislead the public regarding the causes and consequences of climate change. The lawsuit invokes the federal common law of public nuisance. Every entity that contributes to the pollution problem harming Kivalina is liable. [6]

District Court ruling

On September 30, 2009, the United States District Court dismissed the suit filed by Kivalina. The 2nd Circuit ruled that a public nuisance suit brought by states and environmental groups against ExxonMobil Corporation and twenty-three other oil, energy and utility companies based on their business being major producers of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions posed a non-justiciable political question (In a court system they only have the authority to hear and decide a legal question, not a political question. Legal questions are deemed to be justiciable, while political questions are non-justiciable), and that the plaintiffs did not have standing, because the problem is abstract and is difficult to pinpoint its source. [9]

Shortly after it came down, Judge Sandra Brown Armstrong in the Northern District of California dismissed the nuisance claims, stating that the plaintiffs did pose non-justiciable under the political question doctrine and that the plaintiffs "otherwise lacked standing under Article III of the United States Constitution." On standing, the Kivalina Court applied the "fairly traceable" standard used in the Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc, but in the Kivalina case Kivalina's injuries were not fairly traceable to GHGs emitted by the defendants. Here too the Court relied on what it determined was a tenuous causal link to find that plaintiffs lacked standing. [10]

Defendants of current climate change cases such as Comer v. Murphy Oil USA and Connecticut v. American Electric Power are using this ruling as a way to support their defense of a lack of claim for the plaintiff and therefore there is no standing per Article III of the Constitution. [11]

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

An appeal was filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in November 2009. [3] On July 7, 2010, the Washington Legal Foundation filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit urging it to reject an appeal and that the dismissal be affirmed because the lawsuit lacks standing [12] In November 2011 arguments for and against reinstatement of the case were made before an Appeals Panel. [13] On September 21, 2012, the court published an opinion affirming district court decision. [4] [14] On October 4, 2012, the plaintiffs submitted a petition for rehearing by the court en banc . [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kivalina, Alaska</span> City in Alaska, United States

Kivalina(kiv-uh-LEE-nuh) is a city and village in Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska, United States. The population was 377 at the 2000 census and 374 as of the 2010 census.

Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or strategic litigation against public participation, are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.

Amount in controversy is a term used in civil procedure to denote the amount at stake in a lawsuit, in particular in connection with a requirement that persons seeking to bring a lawsuit in a particular court must be suing for a certain minimum amount before that court may hear the case.

Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544 U.S. 280 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and its relation to preclusion and concurrent jurisdiction.

Caterpillar Inc. v. Lewis, 519 U.S. 61 (1996), held that federal jurisdiction predicated on diversity of citizenship can be sustained even if there did not exist complete diversity at the time of removal to federal court, so long as complete diversity exists at the time the district court enters judgment.

Bowoto v. Chevron Corp. was a lawsuit against Chevron Nigeria Ltd., a subsidiary of Chevron USA, which went to trial in 2008 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs, Nigerian citizens who had been injured during or who had survived human rights violations perpetrated by Nigerian military personnel, alleged that the Chevron subsidiary backed the military action and that the parent company thus should bear liability in US courts for the resultant fallout. The suit was decided on December 1, 2008, when nine jurors unanimously agreed Chevron was not liable for any of the numerous allegations. Judgment was entered the next day, officially exonerating Chevron.

Human rights violations in Aceh, Indonesia occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s when ExxonMobil hired Indonesian military units to guard their Arun gas field, and these military units raided and razed local villages. Government inquiries have extensively documented these abuses. Victims allege that ExxonMobil knew about the atrocities, which include assault, torture, and murder, and should be liable for them. The company denies these accusations; its primary defense is that the human rights violations which were occurring were not a result of specific intention of the organization and therefore it cannot be held liable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ExxonMobil</span> American multinational oil and gas company

ExxonMobil Corporation is an American multinational oil and gas corporation and the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The company, which took its present name in 1999 per the merger of Exxon and Mobil, is vertically integrated across the entire oil and gas industry, and within it is also a chemicals division which produces plastic, synthetic rubber, and other chemical products. ExxonMobil is headquartered near the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, though officially incorporated in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The company is the largest oil and gas company based in the US, America's third largest by revenue among all industries, and the eighth largest in the world.

American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, 564 U.S. 410 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–0 decision, held that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under federal common law, primarily because the Clean Air Act (CAA) delegates the management of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Brought to court in July 2004 in the Southern District of New York, this was the first global warming case based on a public nuisance claim.

The Jacksonville, Maryland, ExxonMobil gas leak case is a series of lawsuits against ExxonMobil as a result of a February 2006 underground gasoline leak from an ExxonMobil service station in Jacksonville, Maryland.

John Doe VII v. Exxon Mobil Corp (09–7125) is a lawsuit filed in the United States by 11 Indonesian villagers against ExxonMobil Corporation alleging that the company is responsible for human rights violations in the oil-rich province of Aceh, Indonesia. The case has broad implications for multinational corporations doing business in other countries. Indonesian security forces committed torture, rape, and murder against the plaintiffs and their families while under contract with ExxonMobil to guard the Arun gas field during the late 1990s and early 2000s; plaintiffs claim that Exxon is responsible for these atrocities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of ExxonMobil</span> Overview of controversies and criticisms of ExxonMobil

As the world's largest majority investor-owned oil and gas corporation, ExxonMobil has received significant amounts of controversy and criticism, mostly due to its activities which increase the speed of climate change and its denial of global warming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change in Connecticut</span> Climate change in the US state of Connecticut

Climate change in Connecticut encompasses the effects of climate change, attributed to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the U.S. state of Connecticut.

<i>Juliana v. United States</i> 2015 lawsuit

Juliana, et al. v. United States of America, et al. was a climate-related lawsuit filed in 2015 and dismissed in 2020. Filed by 21 youth plaintiffs against the United States and several executive branch officials. Filing their case in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, the plaintiffs, represented by the non-profit organization Our Children's Trust, include Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the members of Martinez's organization Earth Guardians, and climatologist James Hansen as a "guardian for future generations". Some fossil fuel and industry groups initially intervened as defendants but later requested to be dropped following the 2016 presidential election, stating that the case would be well defended under the new administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change litigation</span> Use of legal practice to further climate change mitigation

Climate change litigation, also known as climate litigation, is an emerging body of environmental law using legal practice to set case law precedent to further climate change mitigation efforts from public institutions, such as governments and companies. Finding that climate change politics provides insufficient climate change mitigation for their tastes, activists and lawyers have increased efforts to use national and international judiciary systems to advance the effort. Climate litigation typically engages in one of five types of legal claims: Constitutional law, administrative law, private law, fraud or consumer protection, or human rights.

Our Children's Trust is an American nonprofit public interest law firm based in Oregon that has filed several lawsuits on behalf of youth plaintiffs against state and federal governments, arguing that they are infringing on the youths' rights to a safe climate system.

<i>People v. Exxon Mobil</i> 2018 New York Supreme Court case

People of the State of New York v. Exxon Mobil Corp. was a lawsuit filed on October 24, 2018, in the New York Supreme Court. The suit alleges fraud by Exxon Mobil Corporation to mislead the company's investors about management of risks posed by climate change. On November 15, 2018, the court signed a preliminary conference order scheduling the trial to begin in 2019.

Connecticut v. ExxonMobil Corp is a climate change litigation case brought on ExxonMobil for seeking profit despite knowing the damages it would produce on the environment.

<i>District of Columbia v. Exxon Mobil Corp.</i>

District of Columbia v. Exxon Mobil Corp. is an ongoing lawsuit filed against Exxon Mobil Corporation and ExxonMobil Oil Corporation by the District of Columbia (D.C.). This case is one of a long list of lawsuits filed against ExxonMobil including environmental and ethical wrongdoings.

<i>Smith v Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd</i>

Smith v Fonterra Co-Operative Group Ltd [2024] NZSC 5 is a landmark New Zealand tort law case, concerning liability of major fossil fuel polluters for climate damage. The NZ Supreme Court held that polluting companies could be liable in tort to pay damages from global warming and rising sea levels to people whose coastal property is damaged, overturning courts below.

References

  1. Heidari Negin, Pearce Joshua M (2016). "A Review of Greenhouse Gas Emission Liabilities as the Value of Renewable Energy for Mitigating Lawsuits for Climate Change Related Damages" (PDF). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 55C: 899–908. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2015.11.025.
  2. "Order Granting Motions to Dismiss" (PDF). Newsroom.law360.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 23, 2010. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
  3. 1 2 "Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. Notice of Appeal" (PDF). November 5, 2009. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  4. 1 2 Native village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil, 11657 , 8(9th Cir.September 21, 2012)("we affirm the judgment of the district court").
  5. Hurley, Lawrence. U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Alaska climate change case, Reuters , May 20, 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "Kivalina, Alaska: Eroding Village Appeals Lawsuit's Dismissal, Blames Corporations For Climate Change". Huffington Post. January 28, 2010.
  7. 1 2 "Relocation". City of Kivalina, The only whaling community in the Northwest Arctic Borough region!. 2007. Archived from the original on August 8, 2010. Retrieved May 5, 2011.
  8. Archived August 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  9. "ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS' MOTIONS TO DISMISS FOR LACK OF SUBJECT MATTER JURISDICTION" (PDF). Shopfloor.org. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
  10. Archived January 23, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  11. "Circuits Avoid Conflict in Climate Change Nuisance Cases; District Court Diverges: Environmental and Natural Resources Law, Attorneys, Beveridge & Diamond". Bdlaw.com. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
  12. "Case Detail: Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp". Wlf.org. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
  13. Carus, Felicity (November 30, 2011). "Alaskan community revives legal bid for global warming damages". The Guardian. London.
  14. R. Trent Taylor (October 8, 2012), United States: The Death Of Environmental Common Law?: The Ninth Circuit's Decision In Native Village Of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., mondaq
  15. J. Wylie Donald (October 7, 2012), The third climate change liability suit fights to stay alive: plaintiffs in Kivalina v. ExxonMobil seek rehearing, McCarter & English