A judge dismissed a Pennsylvania county lawsuit alleging climate change-related harm against major oil and gas companies late on Friday.
Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Stephen Corr dismissed the county’s lawsuit against energy companies including Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, ruling that the court lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case. The decision is one of several recent dismissals of climate nuisance lawsuits filed by Democratic-leaning cities and states seeking major damages from energy companies.
“Today we join a growing chorus of state and federal courts across the United States, singing from the same hymnal, in concluding that the claims raised by Bucks County are not judiciable by any court in Pennsylvania,” Corr wrote in the dismissal.
Bucks County filed the lawsuit in March 2024 and alleged that numerous companies were aware of the climate impacts of fuel products as they engaged in a campaign to mislead the public. The dismissed lawsuit argued that the companies deceived consumers into thinking that their fossil fuel products were safe, which led to their continued use that then further exacerbated the effects of climate change.
“We agree with the Defendants that Bucks County fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because Pennsylvania cannot apply its own laws to claims dealing with air in its ambient or interstate aspects, and, therefore, we are compelled to dismiss this lawsuit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” the dismissal states. “We join many other state and federal courts in finding that claims raised by Bucks County are solely within the province of federal law.”
Bucks County has seen several flash floods in recent years, and the county sought damages in the suit to cover costs for repairs to flood-damaged infrastructure, among other things.
“A simple reading of the complaint proves that Bucks County is truly seeking redress for harm caused by climate change, a global phenomenon caused by the emission of greenhouse gases in every nation in the world,” the dismissal states. Critics of these lawsuits have noted this point for years.
“Judge Corr’s decision was right because the fossil fuel companies were abiding by the law,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the Director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment for the Heritage Foundation wrote in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Environmentalists are trying to use courts to do climate policy because they can’t get their way through a majority of elected officials in the federal or state legislatures. But the way to channel this problem, if there is one, is through laws. If environmentalists can’t get a law passed, they try to get a crackpot judge to agree with them.”
In addition to the jurisdictional issue, Corr also expressed “concern about the manner in which the commissioners went about hiring counsel and filing this lawsuit,” finding that their conduct “violated the spirit of Pennsylvania’s open government act,” known as the Sunshine Act.
“The court … got it right when it expressed ‘concern about the manner in which the Commissioners went about hiring counsel and filing this lawsuit,’ and found that ‘the conduct of the Commissioners violated the spirit of’ Pennsylvania’s open government act,” counsel for Chevron Corporation Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP said in a statement to the DCNF.
The county’s legal counsel, DiCello Levitt, was hired on a contingent basis, meaning that the county government essentially paid no upfront costs for the firm’s services, but the firm would secure a certain percentage of any funds recovered in a settlement. Several other Democratic-leaning jurisdictions that have filed similar lawsuits also hired law firms to assist with their climate litigation under similar contractual arrangements.
At a hearing in March, attorneys representing the companies argued that Bucks County lacked legal standing to bring the claims to court.
“It’s not about solving climate change. It’s about Bucks County surviving it,” an attorney for the county Dan Flynn argued, comparing the case to major tobacco company cases in the hearing.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 8 instructing his administration to investigate state-level attempts to sue or otherwise extract massive payouts from energy companies in the name of climate change. Last month, the Trump administration filed lawsuits against Michigan and Hawaii in an attempt to block the states from seeking damages in court against fossil fuel companies for alleged environmental harm, and days later, Puerto Rico dropped one of its similar lawsuits against major oil and gas companies.
Bucks County officials, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and DiCello Levitt did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment in time for publication.
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