Following in a path to the courtroom well-worn by other local governments throughout the country, the city of Chicago has become the latest big city to sue the oil and gas industry.
In the lawsuit filed Feb. 20 in Cook County Circuit Court, the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson claims allegedly false marketing by the petroleum industry misled people into using gasoline, diesel, natural gas and other fuels. The city claims emissions from those fuels have, in turn, caused the climate to change, leading to a host of bad weather events in Chicago, costing the city big money to address.
The lawsuit names as defendants "some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world." These include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil.
Adam Levitt
| DiCello Levitt
The lawsuit also targets the Washington, D.C.-based American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S. petroleum industry trade in the U.S.
The lawsuit was filed by attorneys from the city's Department of Law. However, the city is also being represented by trial lawyers from the firms of DiCello Levitt LLP, of Chicago, and Sher Edling LLP, of San Francisco.
The Sher Edling firm has also served as counsel on dozens of virtually identical climate-related lawsuits against the oil and gas industry throughout the country. Published reports indicate Sher Edling has received millions of dollars in funding from a dark money group backed by billionaires, known as the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience and Adaptation."
The funding has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress, who note the backing essentially serves as third-party litigation financing, allowing the firm to file lawsuits on behalf of local governments aimed at bankrupting the nation's oil and gas companies, and potentially rake in big bucks in attorney fees from any settlements or judgments.
Such a pattern has long been established in other mass torts, such as those against the tobacco companies over the harms from smoking cigarettes, against pharmaceutical companies over the use of so-called opioid painkillers, and against paint manufacturers over the prevalence of lead in pigments in decades past, among others.
In those cases, trial lawyers partnered with states and local governments to extract settlements - and attorney fees - worth billions, ostensibly in the name of redressing societal costs incurred in dealing with the alleged harms caused by those products and their marketing.
In that same vein, cities, states and other groups of plaintiffs have targeted oil and gas companies, seeking potentially industry-racking windfall returns from the companies, which sold products that remain essential to the American economy and Americans' way of life, fueling the country's transportation and logistics network, powering factories and homes, and providing heat in homes and businesses in otherwise inhospitable winter climates, like Chicago.
Such lawsuits assert those fuels also served as the leading cause of manmade carbon dioxide emissions and other so-called "greenhouse gas" emissions, which are blamed for local and global climate change.
In the Chicago lawsuit, the city and its lawyers claim such emissions have allegedly led to more frequent bad weather events, such as floods, droughts and severe storms, among other alleged harms.
Other lawsuits have accused the petroleum companies of creating a public "nuisance."
The Chicago lawsuit also accuses the companies of causing such a "nuisance," allegedly claiming the use of such fuels also contributes to racial and social "inequities" for the city's low income and minority communities.
But the lawsuit particularly takes aim at what it calls "disinformation" from the oil companies and the API, which they say misled consumers into continuing to use the products for decades after the petroleum companies allegedly knew of the supposed harms caused by those fuels.
Harkening to the anti-tobacco litigation of decades past, the city claimed the petroleum companies and their spokespeople, such as the API, marketed their products in a manner similar to those used by tobacco companies, which allegedly misled consumers by claiming their cigarettes were less harmful by labeling them as "low tar" or "light."
The city asserted the oil industry allegedly also misled consumers by marketing fuels as "cleaner" or "emissions reducing," allegedly to reduce consumer concerns over the fuels' alleged impacts on the environment.
"Rather than warn consumers and the public, fossil fuel companies and their surrogates mounted a disinformation campaign to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change; create doubt in the minds of consumers, the media, teachers, and the public about the climate change impacts of burning fossil fuels; and delay the energy economy's transition to a lower-carbon future," the city's lawsuit said.
"This successful climate deception campaign had the purpose and effect of inflating and sustaining the market for fossil fuels, which - in turn - drove up greenhouse gas emissions, accelerated global warming, and brought about devastating climate change impacts to the city of Chicago."
The lawsuit seeks unspecified total damages from the companies, but damages could quickly climb into the many billions of dollars, under the city's payout demands.
The lawsuit accuses the companies of failure to warn, negligence, nuisance, civil conspiracy, consumer fraud and deceptive marketing, among other counts.
According to a report published by the Energy In Depth blog, which is affiliated with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the lawsuit comes after years of lobbying by anti-petroleum left-wing activists, notably including the Center for Climate Integrity.
Energy In Depth noted that public records reveal the CCI has been lobbying city officials since at least last April, when Johnson replaced former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, to file such a climate-related lawsuit.
Such a lawsuit had also been championed since at least 2021 by 47th Ward Ald. Matt Martin.
Martin was the lone elected official, besides Johnson, quoted in the city's press release announcing the lawsuit.
Energy In Depth also noted that the local Chicago chapter of former Vice President Al Gore's Climate Reality Project also took to social media following the filing of the city's lawsuit to congratulate at least two of its members, Jeff Green and Pam Tate, for "making this happen."
In the blog post discussing the city's lawsuit, Energy In Depth describes the city's claims as "nonsensical."
The report noted that a case brought by the New York Attorney General's office against ExxonMobil, was "resoundingly" defeated in court in 2020. In that case, the state had accused the oil giant of allegedly misleading investors concerning the risks of climate change.
The city of Chicago's claims, they said, are similarly "set up for failure" in the courts. Energy In Depth said the city's claims disregard "the reality of living in a modern economy, where consumer wellbeing, government operations, and industrial productivity all rely on affordable and reliable oil and gas – whether progressive elected officials like it or not."
However, in Hawaii, that state's Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit from the city of Honolulu to continue, saying its "disinformation" claims don't amount to an attempt to use the courts to regulate the oil and gas industry in a way not allowed by federal law or the U.S. Constitution.
Spokespeople for the API did not respond to a request from The Cook County Record for comment on the city's lawsuit.
However, in a statement published by The Chicago Sun-Times, API's general counsel Ryan Meyers said: “This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources.
“Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide - not the court system.”
The city of Chicago is represented in the case by attorneys Adam J. Levitt, Daniel Rock Flynn, Anna Claire Skinner and Anna C. Laird, of the DiCello Levitt firm; and attorneys Victor M. Sher, Matthew K. Edling and Paul Stephan, of Sher Edling.