Oil and gas companies targeted by Chicago City Hall in a sprawling lawsuit over alleged "disinformation" and climate change have moved to get the case out of Cook County court and into federal court, saying the case represents a dangerous attempt by the city to use the lawsuit to impose its left-wing policy goals on the entire nation.
In their petition, the oil and gas companies assert the case belongs in federal court, because the lawsuit launched by the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson amounts to an illegal attempt to use state courts to force energy companies which operate globally and are regulated by federal law to comply with the political demands of Chicago's left-wing majority, and then pay large sums of money in the process for their alleged past transgressions.
Patricia Brown Holmes
| Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila
"The scope of Plaintiff’s (Chicago's) theory is breathtaking — it seeks to regulate the sale of oil and gas anywhere in the world, including all past and otherwise lawful sales, including sales to the federal government," the energy companies said in their petition.
"Because Plaintiff challenges the extraction, sale, and consumption of fossil fuels over the past several decades, the Complaint necessarily calls into question longstanding decisions by the federal government regarding, among other things, national security, national energy policy, environmental protection, the maintenance of a national strategic petroleum reserve program, development of energy resources on the United States’ outer continental shelf lands, mineral extraction on federal lands (which has produced billions of dollars in revenue for the federal government), and the negotiation of international agreements bearing on the development and use of fossil fuels and the appropriate response to the problem of global climate change.
"Likewise, the Complaint implicates numerous actions that have been taken under the direction and supervision of the federal government, including by Defendants, aimed at ensuring the Nation’s national defense and energy and economic security."
They note that despite the protestations to the contrary from the Brandon Johnson administration and those supporting the legal action, oil and gas remain essential to both national defense and the health and wellbeing of Americans and others throughout the world.
"... For vital security and economic reasons, every Administration since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt has taken active steps to increase U.S. oil production," the energy companies wrote. "While the alleged risks of global climate change have increased focus on alternative sources of energy, petroleum remains the backbone of United States energy policy.
"Now, however, Plaintiff asks the court to find that this same petroleum production and use contributes to, among other things, an unlawful 'public nuisance' under Illinois state law."
The city filed its lawsuit in February in Cook County Circuit Court.
In that complaint, the city and its lawyers claim carbon dioxide emissions generated by automobiles, power plants, factories and other basic sources of modern life using so-called "fossil fuels" have allegedly contributed to local and global climate change. The lawsuit claims that climate change has in turn led to more frequent bad weather events, such as floods, droughts and severe storms, among other alleged harms, costing the city big money to address.
The Chicago lawsuit asserts this makes the use of oil and gas a "public nuisance," by allegedly also contributing to racial and social "inequities" for the city's low income and minority communities.
The lawsuit also particularly takes aim at what it calls "disinformation" from the oil companies, which the city says has misled consumers into continuing to use the products for decades after the energy companies allegedly knew of the supposed harms caused by the use of their fuels.
"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 city wrote in its lawsuit.
The city's lawsuit largely copies a path blazed by other local government lawsuits against the same energy companies, as well as by earlier litigation against tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies and others who have supplied many of the products common to American life.
The city is joined in the action 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." That funding has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress, who note the backing funds the firm's lawsuits on behalf of local governments aimed at bankrupting the nation's oil and gas companies.
In their petition to take the case to federal court, the energy companies said the city's lawsuit is both dangerous and misguided, as it ignores and threatens the societal and economic progress that has been fueled over more than a century by the rise of petroleum fuels.
"At bottom, this case is about the global production, sale, and consumption of vital products that virtually every person on the planet uses and relies upon every day," the energy companies wrote. "Oil and gas power our national defense; keep our homes, offices, factories, hospitals and other essential facilities illuminated, heated, cooled, and ventilated; and transport people and products, including virtually every consumer good - from food to medicine to clothing - across the nation and around the world.
"The national energy policy necessarily reflects a balance between fueling our everyday activities, being prepared to defend national interests wherever they are threatened, and environmental concerns. By means of this lawsuit, Plaintiff seeks to upset that balance, overturn decades of federal energy policy, penalize actions taken at the behest of the federal government, and threaten the reliable, affordable supply of energy on which this country, and the world depends."
The oil and gas companies are represented in the action by attorney Patricia Brown Holmes and others with the firms of Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila, of Chicago; Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco; Susman Godfrey LLP, of Houston; and Stern Kilcullen & Rufolo, of Fordham Park, New Jersey.