 Global
Warming Litigation on Behalf of Katrina Victims
On August 30, 2007, a federal judge in Gulfport, Mississippi, will
hear a suit that links the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina to the
effects of global warming. Among the defendants named in the suit
are
twenty-six oil companies (including big names like Shell, Chevron,
BP,
Hess, Exxon Mobil, Atlantic-Richfield) and 121 coal companies. These
companies are being held responsible for significantly contributing
to
global warming and therefore to the devastation caused by the
hurricane. This class-action suit is being argued by Gerald Maples
on
behalf of Katrina victims.
Maples, a Mississippi native and veteran asbestos
lawyer with offices
in New Orleans, maintains in this suit (Ned Comer, et al. Plaintiffs,
vs. Murphy Oil, U.S.A. INC. et. al. Defendants. Case No:
1:05-cv-00436-LTS-RHWT) that the business practices of energy
companies led to greenhouse emissions that led to global warming.
Maples' innovative legal approach is an extension of the common
law
tort doctrine: like stinking pig farms and raucous roadhouses, but
on
a much larger scale, the defendants with their business practices
constitute a public nuisance. In other words, because the energy
industry is directly and indirectly responsible for the increased
intensity of hurricane activity and the increased rise in sea level,
it is responsible for the increases in risk—wind and water—that
resulted in damage to property along coastal areas struck by Hurricane
Katrina. What's more, the dramatic increase in insurance premiums
that obtains after the storm is also linked in the suit to the
irresponsible practices of the defendants and their carbon-corporate
culture.
An article in Business Week (October 30, 2006) discussed various
lawyers husbanding global warming cases through the courts and
commented on this case: "Maples will have a major win…if
the judge
even allows the trial to take place." Maples has achieved this
major
win. Just days before Al Gore's Live Day celebration, Judge Louis
Guirola, Jr., agreed to hear oral arguments in this case on August
30th.
What's at stake? An important question before the Southern District
Court of Mississippi will now be whether the plaintiffs have
"standing" to bring this litigation. Among other things—and
this is a
complex matter—there is the issue of how much this is a political
matter and whether it may be more appropriately dealt with by Congress
or the White House. The larger question is what's to be done when
government agents or agencies you would think have been
constitutionally mandated for the job are doing nothing. What is
the
role of the courts in getting something going?
Communities across the country—not to mention lawyers engaged
in
similar litigations--are closely watching this case. Inuits in the
far
North and Texans in the far South are joined together across their
differences by a concern that oil and coal companies dump and spew
poisonous industrial waste into the land, water and air, and that
they
do so without conscience and without consideration for either
long-term local or global impact. Furthermore, these communities
question whether energy companies have the incentive to face up
to
their responsibilities without the big nudge of legal action and
the
threat of financial compensation to the individual citizens they
have
harmed. The decision in this case will set important precedent,
with
incalculable ramifications both legal, and economic.
In future, depending on the outcome, a decision in this case can
make
it either easier or harder for private individuals pursuing this
kind
of litigation against energy companies. The decision will serve
as a
boost either to one side or the other. Interestingly, this case
is
counting energy companies as one link in a chain that begins with
global warming and ends with insurance company billing practices.
Here is how that logic works: Because insurance companies are now
using risk models that factor in global warming projections to
calculate the premiums they ask their policy-holders to pay (a de
facto admission of global warming by insurance C.E.O.'s) then it
surely follows that the global warming caused by energy companies
is
also a cause of increased insurance rates. This case asks the oil
and
coal companies to take over some financial responsibility for the
global warming they are in effect recognizing in their billing
practices.
GERALD MAPLES, P.A. is currently working on other, Katrina-related
class action suits: Tommaseo v United States of America; Fitzmorris
v
The Board of Commissioners for the Orleans Parish Levee District,
et
al; Patrick Turner v Murphy Oil, USA, et al.
Contact: Diane Stevenon dkstevenson@gmail.com
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