The City and County of Honolulu’s lawsuit against several fossil fuel companies endured another legal salvo this week.
In 2020, Honolulu sued the petroleum companies Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Sunoco, BP, Exxon Mobil and BHP in attempt to hold them accountable for damages caused by climate change.
The lawsuit argued that the companies knew for decades about the “catastrophic” impacts of climate change yet worked to conceal and obfuscate that knowledge in order to continue to profit from fossil fuel use.
“Defendants are directly responsible for the substantial increase in all CO2 emissions between 1965 and the present,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants individually and collectively played leadership roles in denialist campaigns to misinform and confuse the public and obscure the role of Defendants’ products in causing global warming and its associated impacts. But for such campaigns, climate crisis impacts in [Honolulu] would have been substantially mitigated or eliminated altogether.”
That suit — and a corresponding suit filed by the State of Hawai‘i in May — led to a complicated series of countersuits and motions by the defendants and by the U.S. Department of Justice, which also sued Hawai‘i in May because its lawsuit interferes with President Donald Trump’s energy agenda.
One of those counter motions was made by Chevron arguing that the suit should be dismissed, based on a California law that, so the argument went, should take precedence over Hawai‘i laws because of where Chevron was headquartered at the time.
The state Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the suit should not be dismissed, with Associate Justice Clyde Wadsworth finding that the state of California does not have sufficient interest in the case to warrant being applied to the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, First Circuit Judge Lisa Cataldo heard another argument by the petroleum companies on Tuesday that also called for the suit’s dismissal, this time because of an expired statute of limitations.
Because the allegations in Honolulu’s suit were publicly known for years, the defendants argued, the period of time in which the City and County could seek restitution has long passed.
Honolulu’s legal team argued in part that, because the effects of climate change cause “ever-worsening public nuisance conditions on O‘ahu,” the statute of limitations cannot apply, as “no length of time will legalize a public nuisance.”
Cataldo will make a ruling on this latest back-and-forth by October, but there is no indication that a trial date could be scheduled anytime soon.
Meanwhile, the state’s lawsuit also had a court hearing this week, with judge Jordon Kimura considering a motion by the petroleum companies to suspend proceedings. No decision was made on that motion Wednesday.
Honolulu Corporation Counsel could not comment on ongoing litigation.
