There has been a rash of good courtroom news lately: Trump’s bid to end the lawsuit over him selling off National Monuments was squashed, the opposition to eminent domain for pipelines was emboldened, and an appeals court ruled against one of Trump’s pro-pollution regulatory rollbacks.
But perhaps bigger than all that is the ruling that a Baltimore lawsuit against more than two dozen fossil fuel companies will be allowed to proceed in state court (instead of federal, where the industry wanted to move it). Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, which UCLA’s Ann Carlson said is “highly unlikely,” the case can now move forward to the discovery stage.
It is hard to overstate how big a deal this is for exposing denial’s fossil fuel funding, creation, coordination, and overall deception.
The Baltimore suit alleges BP, Exxon, Shell and other fossil fuel companies misled the public about the climate science that clearly showed the dangers of their product. Moving to the discovery stage means that the companies will have to turn over documents involving what they knew about climate change, when they came to know those facts, and, most importantly, what they then chose to do about those facts.
As Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmel said in a statement, “Baltimore should receive material that is likely to shed significant light on how the companies—with knowledge of their top executives—intentionally deceived the public about the harm their products caused.”
The going will be tough, as Big Oil will fight every step of the way, but they can only stonewall so much. Think about the documents that investigative journalists have already revealed showing what Exxon knew about climate change, what Shell knew, what API knew, etc.
And remember, that reporting was largely based on already-public or semi-public documents. These were the documents that the industry didn’t keep under lock and key, and they already paint a pretty damning picture of how the industry knowingly deceived the public about the risks of its product.
Now realize that the company will have to turn over all the documents they’ve kept secret: the specific plans for advertising and public relations, how they were executed and what their successes and failures were, exact funding levels for what groups and justifications for why they were funding them, etc. For reference, the 14 million documents produced by the tobacco industry as a result of the litigation that give precedent to these types of suits, are still regularly cited by papers exploring tobacco, denial, and industrial propaganda.
Plus, at some point, those executives could be put on the stand, sworn under oath to testify, under threat of perjury, about their network of deniers paid to defend the industry’s interests.
Though it’s still early in the process, and there is much work left to be done, the fact that Baltimore’s case is going to discovery could not B-More exciting.
(At least for nerds like us!)
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