Fossil fuel firms move to dismiss climate lawsuit in Hawaii as Maui faces wildfires - The Guardian US

Fossil fuel firms move to dismiss climate lawsuit in Hawaii as Maui faces wildfires | US news | The Guardian

Hawaii’s supreme court on Thursday will hear attempts by fossil fuel companies to dismiss a climate accountability lawsuit. The hearing comes as the deadly fires in Maui capture global headlines.

In 2020, officials from the city and county of Honolulu sued eight fossil fuel giants who allegedly knew for decades about the climate dangers of burning coal, oil and gas, yet actively hid that information from consumers and investors. That misinformation campaign, the lawsuit argues, is a key reason Honolulu is facing the steep costs of abating climate damages from extreme weather events.

The case is one of dozens filed against big oil since 2017 by states and municipalities over climate deception, which build on certain oil companies’ well-documented history of sowing doubt about climate science. Another suit was filed by Maui county, where fires among the deadliest in US history have been blazing; that case was at one point consolidated with Honolulu’s.

The fires ravaging Hawaii “underscore the importance” of such litigation, said Denise Antolini, a retired University of Hawaii law professor and supporter of the plaintiffs.

“If the truth had been known about climate change, if the truth had been allowed to be known by big oil, Hawaii might have had a different future,” she said. Though the climate crisis was not the sole cause of the record-breaking fires, she added, it “set the table” for the destruction by fueling unusually hot, dry, flammable conditions.

Fires are just one form of extreme weather the Honolulu case says is plaguing the city and county. Other climate-related public nuisances, including flooding, sea level rise, heatwaves and drought, are together costing the city billions and putting residents and property at risk, the lawsuit says.

The defendants’ attorneys in the Honolulu case have not attempted to argue that climate change is not real or human-caused. In fact, in a 2021 hearing, Chevron attorney Ted Boutrous, speaking for all of the suit’s defendants, said climate change is an “exceedingly important issue of utmost public concern”.

Yet the defendants have filed several motions to dismiss the case, two of which the Hawaii supreme court will hear on Thursday afternoon.

“The hearing … is an incredibly important milestone in the case because it determines whether or not the case will proceed to discovery, to further motions and to trial,” said Antolini. “So it’s a go or no go point.”

The court will probably first hear a “ personal jurisdiction” motion, in which the defendants will argue that they did not conduct enough business in Hawaii to be hauled into the state’s courts. After all, the vast majority of planet-heating pollution from defendants’ fossil fuel products was emitted outside of Hawaii, they claim. But that argument is wrongheaded, said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which backs the litigation against the industry.

“This lawsuit is about deception and it alleges that the company engaged in deceptive practices within Honolulu, within Hawaii,” he said.

The defendants will then argue a “failure to state a claim” motion, which claims that the lawsuit should be tossed out because the issues with which it grapples should be dealt with by lawmakers, not state courts. The first circuit court in Hawaii denied both of these motions to dismiss last year, but the defendants appealed.

“These are delay tactics they’re using to avoid going to court,” said Wiles.

One defendant in the Honolulu suit, Chevron, has also filed a third motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that it violates company’s first amendment rights. That motion was also dismissed by a Hawaii court last year and is moving through a separate appeals process.
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The hearing will come just days after climate campaigners notched a major win in another type of climate lawsuit. On Monday, a Montana judge ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs who sued the state government on the grounds that its pro-fossil fuel policies violated their constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment.

Advocates say it sets a positive tone for a similar federal lawsuit, Juliana v US, which is set to go to trial in the coming months, and four similar state lawsuits, including one filed by Hawaii youth plaintiffs which will go to trial in June 2024.

The Montana victory was heartening, said Wiles. “It shows that climate cases can win in the courts,” he said.

But the youth-led lawsuits are based on a different legal theory than the Honolulu case and others filed by governments against big oil, he said

“They’re complementary strategies,” he said. “One says you’ve got to get the government to stop backing policies that actually accelerate climate change, and the other says one of the reasons they do that is because of the influence of industry lying and swaying public opinion.”

Thursday’s hearing, which will be livestreamed, will convene three supreme court justices in Hawaii, as well as two alternate justices assigned to fill in for recent retirees. One of those alternates is John Tonaki, who was the judge who this month assigned the Hawaii youth constitutional climate case a trial date, Antolini noted.

“They’re not the same, but they’re all connected,” she said. “It just shows you the different legal pathways communities are using … to take on climate change.”