Groundbreaking Lawsuit Accuses Big Oil of Conspiracy to Deceive Public About Climate Change

July 03, 2008
Interview by Amy Goodman


Attorney Stephen Susman helped file a groundbreaking lawsuit earlier this year on behalf of 400 Inupiat villagers in the Alaskan town of Kivalina who are being forced to relocate because of flooding caused by global warming. The suit accuses twenty oil, gas and electric companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Peabody, of being responsible for emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases causing the Arctic ice to melt.

Guest:

Stephen Susman, founding partner of the law firm Susman Godfrey. He recently filed a pioneering global warming lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and twenty other oil, coal and electric companies, on behalf of residents of the Alaskan Native coastal village of Kivalina.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, a judge in Georgia blocked the construction of a coal-fired power plant, because the plant did not set limits on carbon dioxide emissions. In what’s being described as an unprecedented ruling, the judge said the plant could not receive an air pollution permit unless it limits its emissions.

Today, we’re going to look at the rapidly growing field of global warming litigation. I’m joined here in Aspen, Colorado by the attorney Stephen Susman. He’s the founding partner of the law firm Susman Godfrey. Earlier this year, he helped file a groundbreaking lawsuit on behalf of 400 villagers in the Alaskan town of Kivalina. They’re being forced to relocate because of flooding caused by global warming.

The suit accuses twenty oil, gas and electric companies of being responsible for emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases, causing the Arctic ice to melt. Companies named in the suit include ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Peabody. The suit also accuses eight of the corporations of being involved in a conspiracy to mislead the public about the causes of global warming.

Susman and his legal team have adopted a legal strategy similar to that used by lawyers who fought Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Stephen Susman was also involved in that litigation: he was an attorney for the tobacco giant Philip Morris.

Stephen Susman also recently represented the Texas Cities for Clean Air Coalition in their successful effort to block the energy company TXU from building ten new coal-burning power plants. The case was featured in Robert Redford’s documentary Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars.

Attorney Steve Susman joins me here in Aspen, Colorado. We welcome you to Democracy Now!

STEPHEN SUSMAN: Pleasure to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about this lawsuit.

STEPHEN SUSMAN: Well, this lawsuit was—in these cases, you need to find the right plaintiff. This was the perfect plaintiff, because it was a village that has—a Native village that has standing under federal law to bring a lawsuit. This is not a class action. The problem with all the tobacco cases, initially, was that they had to be brought as class actions. Individuals’ injuries were too different to be asserted in a class action, so none of the tobacco cases were certified for class treatment. They became successful when the lawyers figured out a way to represent the states, and they didn’t have to be class action, so the state was the perfect plaintiff seeking Medicaid reimbursement. Here, we have a perfect plaintiff: they have federal law standing to sue for injuries to their village, because they’re a Native tribe—it does not have to be a class action—and they have sustained the most direct kind of injury and of interest from global warming.

An increase in the ambient temperatures in the Arctic prevents the sea ice from forming on the seaward side of this six-mile-long barrier island. And as a result, the harsh storms during the fall and winter wash over the island and are about to wash it away. So there is a direct consequence of the increase in temperatures. You know, you can think of other harms from global warming that are more indirect, like damages from storms. Kivalina was one of those, where, you know, well, the storms—the global warming warms the Gulf Stream, the Gulf Stream creates more severe weather, where the causation is more tenuous. Here, it was direct, people directly injured. The Corps of Engineers says that it will cost between $100 million and $300 million to relocate them to the mainland, which has to be done. And so, they were the perfect client.

They asked us to file this lawsuit on their behalf. A group of lawyers organized themselves and are doing it. And we hope that the court will let us proceed with our claim that many of the defendants in our case—the case is very simple. The case is a nuisance case. The theory is basically, you can’t do something on your property that prevents the enjoyment of mine. I mean, if you were barbecuing and ashes from your barbecue pit fell on my house and burned it up, that’s a perfect nuisance case, and you would be liable under the common laws, as long as we’ve had common law. Now, this is a little more direct, because what they’re putting in the atmosphere hurts everyone in the world, for sure, and there are a lot of people putting the stuff up there. So it’s very difficult—impossible to get all of the wrongdoers in the same courtroom. And that’s where we’re testing the theory.

So that’s why we filed the lawsuit. We hope that we will be able to proceed with the lawsuit. And all we are seeking here is not a big pile of money, but to have the oil companies relocate these people to the mainland. If they don’t want to relocate them, let them build a barrier, some kind of barrier wall around the island so they stay where they are.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this isn’t the first lawsuit brought around the issue of global warming—

STEPHEN SUSMAN: No.


Complete Interview Transcript at: Democracy Now!

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