First wrongful death climate change lawsuit faces unique legal challenges; Children take Trump to court

Plus, environmentalists are demanding info from the Trump administration about SpaceX landing pads in the Pacific Ocean.

Repair work on I-5 near Seattle after extreme heat caused the road to buckle during the 2021 heat wave. Heat causes concrete and asphalt to expand and push against itself, causing buckling, officials said. Photo courtesy SounderBruce via Wikimedia Commons.

A Washington woman whose mother died during a 2021 heat wave in Seattle claims in a new lawsuit that Big Oil is responsible for her death, since the deadly weather is “directly linked” to the use and sale of their products.

The lawsuit was filed against firms like Exxon, BP, Chevron and Shell in Washington state court — and represents what legal experts say is the first-ever wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a climate disaster.

Julie Leon's daughter, Misti Leon, said in the lawsuit that the companies knew for decades that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change, but actively undermined the public’s knowledge of those risks to secure economic dependence on their products.

Those decades of deception, the lawsuit claims, led directly to the June 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that strained Seattle’s energy grid, buckled roads, overloaded emergency rooms and ultimately killed 65-year-old Julie after she overheated in her car.

“Defendants have known for all of Julie’s life that their affirmative misrepresentations and omissions would claim lives. Julie is a victim of Defendants’ conduct. Her lifespan is a bridge between cause and effect,” the lawsuit said.

Tim Bechtold, an attorney for Leon, told Landmark that, in traditional tort law, if someone causes harm to another, they should be accountable for it. He thinks that the case will make good on advances in climate attribution science and could spur others to take action as well.

“If it turns out that a lot of people are being harmed by these companies and experiencing personal damages, then it’s only natural that those companies should be held accountable,” he said.

BP declined to comment. The other oil companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a high level, the allegations are similar to those in dozens of other lawsuits that have been filed by states and local governments. Those cases also claim that fossil fuel firms misled the public for decades about the threat of using their products. They generally raise public nuisance, product liability and consumer protection claims and seek billions to help mitigate and prepare for flooding, drought, fires and other severe weather made more likely by climate change.

Among those cases, the city and county of Honolulu, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have survived motions to dismiss and are gearing up for or are currently in discovery.

But adding the wrongful death element to the case will make it much more difficult for Leon’s lawyers.

“It’s more difficult to prove attribution for a specific individual than for a statistical population,” Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School, told Landmark.

Gerrard pointed out that no U.S. case has yet been finished, and that internationally, the cases are more of a mixed bag.

The European Court of Human Rights last year found in favor of thousands of Swiss women who claimed extreme heat was harming them, and that the government failed to act. But a German court just this week rejected a Peruvian farmer’s claims that an energy company is responsible for increased flood risk near his home.

Gerrard expects the oil companies to first challenge the lawsuit on procedural grounds, like arguing the case is preempted by federal law. Long after that, if the case survives, one might expect specific questions around the facts of Leon’s specific case like the degree to which the companies are directly responsible for the 2021 heat wave and whether other actions could have saved the woman’s life.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

• Young people are suing Trump to block his energy emergency executive orders: Twenty-two young people represented by the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust filed a new lawsuit in Montana federal court, seeking to block President Donald Trump’s executive orders that seek to “unleash” American energy.
  
  The youth claim there is no energy emergency in the United States and that agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of the Interior — by carrying out the president’s executive orders — are contributing to climate change harms that especially impact children and violate their due process rights to life and liberty under the U.S. Constitution.

• Shell is being forced to fork over climate risk data in a Rhode Island case: A Rhode Island federal judge told Shell that it must comply with a discovery request to provide documents related to the flooding and storm risk at its bulk storage and fuel terminal in Providence.
  
  The Conservation Law Foundation’s lawsuit against Shell claims the company is failing to prepare the terminal adequately for climate change impacts, which puts nearby waterways and the community that uses them at risk. The lawsuit claims Shell’s facility is already causing spills of oil, ethanol and other toxic chemicals, and that more could come as climate change further exacerbates extreme weather.

• Trump’s plan to land SpaceX rockets in wildlife refuge gets legal scrutiny: Environmental groups are seeking records from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service related to plans to build launch pads for SpaceX rockets in sensitive marine habitat in the Pacific Ocean.
  
  The Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in Hawaii federal court seeking to compel the government to comply with its Freedom of Information Act request, and claims repeated rocket landings could disrupt sensitive wildlife, including protected species, migrating birds and other marine life.