{"id":1252,"date":"2026-07-29T13:43:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2026-07-29T13:43:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:43:24","slug":"big-oil-is-getting-sued-for-heat-deaths-its-fighting-back-with-an-army-of-immunity-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1252","title":{"rendered":"Big Oil Is Getting Sued for Heat Deaths. It\u2019s Fighting Back With an Army of Immunity Laws."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>Grist\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>

Read more The Rapid Rise of Right-Wing Militias<\/a><\/p>\n

Could the oil<\/span> industry be held responsible for fueling the extreme heat that led to a woman\u2019s death?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the question at the heart of a novel lawsuit in Washington state. Misti Leon\u2019s mother\u00a0died from overheating\u00a0during the hottest day in state history in June 2021, when temperatures climbed to 108 degrees F. Scientists said the unusual heat dome that descended on the Pacific Northwest would have been \u201cvirtually impossible\u201d\u00a0without climate change. So last year, Leon\u00a0sued Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and other oil majors\u00a0for wrongful death, alleging that they had known for decades that fossil fuel emissions would lead to destructive consequences, but deceived the public about it, delaying action that could have prevented her mother\u2019s death. An estimated\u00a01,200 people\u00a0in the region perished from the heat during that simmering week in June.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a King County judge ruled against the oil companies\u2019 motions to dismiss Leon\u2019s lawsuit, allowing it to proceed toward trial. The ruling was a signal that this kind of case has merit, said Mike Meno, the communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit supporting climate accountability cases. \u201cIt\u2019s the latest type of legal liability that the oil companies are absolutely terrified of and are going to fight like hell to try to escape,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than a decade after investigations found that\u00a0Exxon Mobil\u00a0had known about the dangers of global warming since the 1970s but publicly downplayed the threat, lawsuits against oil companies have proliferated. There are nearly 40 of these cases pending across the country, according to Margaret Barry, who manages a climate litigation database at Columbia Law School\u2019s Sabin Center. After years of delay tactics from the oil industry, at least five of these lawsuits\u2014from Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Honolulu\u2014have proceeded to the discovery stage, in which both sides try to uncover evidence to bolster their case in court. That\u2019s the last major step before a trial, when oil executives would be forced to defend their actions in front of a jury.<\/p>\n

Some cases are on hold as judges wait to hear how the Supreme Court\u00a0handles a lawsuit\u00a0from Boulder, Colorado, this fall. The city and county of Boulder allege that Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy violated state laws by concealing the dangers of their products and they want money to pay for the rising costs of improving infrastructure to deal with heat waves, wildfires, and floods. The outcome could affect existing climate lawsuits, or push plaintiffs to take different approaches.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the industry has been mobilizing a counterattack against the lawsuits with the help of the Trump administration and Republican politicians. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry\u2019s biggest lobbying group, has said that\u00a0\u00a0was to \u201cstop extreme climate liability policy.\u201d The industry has begun challenging \u201cattribution science,\u201d a rapidly developing field that seeks to quantify how climate change, and even emissions from specific companies, have intensified extreme weather.\u00a0<\/p>

Read more A For-Profit Hospital Slashed Costs. Then a Patient Froze to Death on Its Roof.<\/a><\/p>\n

The flurry of activity suggests that the industry feels like it\u2019s under threat, Meno said. \u201cQuite simply, Big Oil is in panic mode.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Republicans are trying to pass laws to grant oil majors immunity to these kinds of lawsuits, with success in several states so far. Utah, Iowa, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have recently signed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from lawsuits related to greenhouse gas emissions, while Montana and Utah (again) reformed existing laws to narrowly define what counts as a \u201cpublic nuisance,\u201d effectively blocking lawsuits against oil companies to recover damages from climate change under that legal theory. The effort has gone national: Republicans in both chambers of Congress\u00a0introduced bills this spring\u00a0that would give oil companies broad immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for climate damages, with\u00a0the backing of the American Petroleum Institute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In April, an\u00a0investigation from ProPublica\u00a0revealed a coordinated effort behind these \u201cliability shield\u201d laws from conservative groups tied to the activist Leonard Leo. Evidence provided to Grist<\/em> from the watchdog group Fieldnotes shows that Koch Industries and Exxon, in particular, have extensive ties to the organizations pushing for these laws, including the American Legislative Exchange Council and the American Tort Reform Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these companies have done nothing wrong and they think the law is on their side, why are they lobbying Congress for immunity?\u201d Meno said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oil executives have also gotten help from the federal government, following\u00a0an executive order\u00a0from President Donald Trump last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits by states. This May, the Justice Department responded to Minnesota\u2019s climate lawsuit against Big Oil with\u00a0a lawsuit of its own, just as the state\u2019s case\u00a0was moving into the discovery phase. It said Minnesota was undermining \u201cAmerican energy dominance\u201d and attempting to regulate\u00a0greenhouse gases, which should fall under the purview of federal law\u2014echoing the oil industry\u2019s well-known argument. In a related development, Robert Levy, a longtime Exxon lawyer, recently joined the Department of Justice in the\u00a0newly dubbed\u00a0\u201cEnergy and Natural Resources Division\u201d (instead of the \u201cEnvironment and Natural Resources Division\u201d).<\/p>

Read more The IRS Is Imploding<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As lawsuits near trial, oil companies race to win immunity in statehouses and Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nBig Oil Is Getting Sued for Heat Deaths. It\u2019s Fighting Back With an Army of Immunity Laws. - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1252\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Big Oil Is Getting Sued for Heat Deaths. 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