(The Center Square) – Lawyers in a climate change lawsuit by the city of Charleston against oil and gas companies have until Tuesday to submit proposed orders in the case.
Circuit Court Judge Robert M. Young granted lawyers a request for an extension from an earlier July 1 due date, Robyn Hills told the Center Square. She’s the administrative assistant to Young.
The city in 2020 sued 24 oil and gas companies claiming that they knew their products contributed to climate change but didn’t disclose that to the public. Charleston seeks unspecified monetary damages from the companies to cover the cost of mitigating climate change.
Young held a two-day hearing on the lawsuit in late May. His ruling is pending.
Counsel for Charleston argued during the hearing that oil and gas companies withheld information from the public about fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change in order to preserve profits from the sales of their products.
Oil companies intentionally created a market where energy choices were artificially limited to fossil fuels, one of the lawyers for Charleston, Matt Edling, told Young during the hearing.
“When I get into a car, or a train or a bus or a plane, we don’t really care what the energy source is that leads to the transportation,” Edling told the judge. “We just care that it gets us from point A to point B and that if we’re paying for it, that’s it’s the most economic choice that is available to us.”
However, counsel for the defendants pointed out the city of Charleston still uses fossil fuels to this day because there are few affordable alternatives available even now.
Lawyers for the defendants also said federal law preempts lawsuits in state courts since the federal government regulates emissions.
In May, a judge in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, dismissed a similar case on those grounds.
“The same is true here; indeed, Charleston uses the word emissions 83 times in its complaint, while using the words deceptive and deception only 34 times combined,” Chevron lawyer Theodor J. Boutrous wrote Young in a letter.
One of Charleston’s attorneys, Victor Sher, disagreed.
“The court should assign no persuasive value to Bucks County, an erroneous decision that contains no original legal analysis and adds nothing that has not already been addressed by the parties,” Sher wrote Young in response to Boutrous’ letter.
