Dive Brief:
- A state judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by New York City seeking to hold Big Oil accountable for alleged greenwashing practices and its role in exacerbating climate change, per a ruling issued last week.
- State Supreme Court Justice Anar Patel wrote in her Jan. 14 decision New York City had failed to demonstrate that the defendants named in its suit — ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and the American Petroleum Institute — had deceived consumers about the climate impact of their fossil fuel products.
- Patel’s dismissal stated that the city could not claim New Yorkers were “climate conscious” and sensitive to the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, but were “misled” by oil and gas companies’ failure to disclose how their fossil fuel products contributed to it.
Dive Insight:
The state judge said that as the city has previously alleged “there is near universal consensus that global warming is primarily caused, or at least accelerated, by the burning of fossil fuels,” it cannot — at the same time — say its consumers were “duped” by oil and gas companies’ failure to disclose that “their fossil fuel products … contribute to climate change.”
“The City cannot have it both ways,” Patel wrote in her ruling.
The state judge’s ruling also said the city had not “sufficiently pled” how Big Oil misled consumers with marketing campaigns by showing support for clean energy and alternative energy sources, and called the alleged greenwashing statements “inactionable.” Patel added some of the alleged greenwashing statements highlighted by New York City were “distortions” of original statements or had been taken out of context.
Patel also argued that some of the alleged greenwashing statements did not fall under the state’s consumer protection statutes as they consisted of language that was aspirational, opinionated or exaggerated.
“No reasonable consumer would be misled by these subjective, nonspecific, and vague statements,” Patel wrote.
The New York City Law Department told ESG Dive it was disappointed with last week’s ruling and was reviewing its legal options.
“Our complaint alleged that these defendants spent millions to mislead consumers to think that they, and their products, contribute to a clean energy future. They do not,” a spokesperson for the law department said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Companies that violate the city’s consumer protection laws should be held fully accountable. New Yorkers deserve no less.”
The city filed the suit in a state court in April 2021, shortly after a federal appeals court rejected its bid to hold five oil and gas companies — Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips — accountable for causing climate-linked damages, such as global warming.
New York’s suit against Big Oil is one of at least 86 climate cases filed against fossil fuel producers since 2015, according to a report from Oil Change International and Zero Carbon Analytics. The report also found that the annual number of climate-related lawsuits filed against the world’s largest fossil fuel producing companies has nearly tripled since the Paris Agreement was adopted a decade ago. Companies facing litigation include Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil.
The suit is also one of many initiated by states, cities and municipalities — from California to Chicago and Honolulu — looking to hold Big Oil accountable for its role in spurring climate change and related natural disasters.
Shell declined to comment on the ruling. ExxonMobil did not provide a comment as of press time.
