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Baltimore City officials plan to appeal a decision earlier this month to dismiss the city’s nearly 6-year-old lawsuit against more than two dozen fossil fuel companies for allegedly misleading the public about their operations’ harmful effects on the climate.
Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Videtta A. Brown ruled that Baltimore’s claims are preempted by federal common law and therefore cannot survive.
In granting the oil and fossil fuels companies’ motion to dismiss, Brown found “the Constitution’s federal structure does not allow the application of state law to claims like those presented by Baltimore.”
“Global pollution-based complaints were never intended by Congress to be handled by individual states,” Brown wrote in dismissing the multimillion-dollar lawsuit. “The Supreme Court of the United States has held that state law cannot be used to resolve claims seeking redress for injuries caused by out of state pollution.”
According to the opinion, Baltimore alleged the oil companies “have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuels have warmed the planet and changed the climate” both throughout the world and in Baltimore.
Namely, Baltimore argued that because of the companies’ actions or inactions, the sea level has risen, extreme precipitation events have increased in frequency and severity, and public health issues have developed, to name a few.
Baltimore also argued the novel claim, according to the Baltimore City Circuit Court, that the companies’ extraction, production, promotion, marketing and sale of fossil fuels has contributed to the increase in fossil fuel use and has contributed to global climate change.
Sara Gross, chief of the affirmative litigation division of the Baltimore City Department of Law, said the Baltimore City Department of Law, which represents the mayor and City Council of Baltimore, disagrees with the court’s ruling.
“We respectfully disagree with this opinion and will be seeking review from a higher court,” Gross said in an email.
Theodore Boutrous, Jr., counsel for Chevron Corporation, said the ruling recognizes that climate policy “cannot be advanced by the unconstitutional application of state law to regulate global emissions.”
“As the court stated, Baltimore’s claims are ‘beyond the limits of Maryland state law’ and ‘cannot survive because they are preempted by federal common law (and the Clean Air Act),’” Boutrous said in an email. “The meritless state tort cases now being orchestrated by a small group of plaintiffs’ lawyers only detract from legitimate progress toward a lower carbon global energy system.”
Baltimore’s lawsuit was one of many similar lawsuits brought in other states, where the companies have repeatedly tried to have the cases moved into federal court.
The case bounced between the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court before the Maryland Supreme Court last year declined to hear the companies’ request, sending the case back to state court.
The Baltimore City Circuit Court also rejected Baltimore’s public nuisance theory, where the city alleged the companies’ misrepresentations and deceptive conduct increased the global use of fossil fuels, which Baltimore said damaged its infrastructure. The circuit court found the Maryland appellate courts “have yet to extend public nuisance to deceptive marketing complaints.”