A lawyer for the cities of Oakland and San Francisco asked a
federal appeals court Wednesday to reinstate their climate-change lawsuits against
five oil companies.
The two cities claim San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. and four
other companies created a public nuisance under California law by promoting oil
and natural gas fuels while allegedly knowing that they lead to global warming and
sea level rise.
The cities’ lawsuits, originally filed in Alameda County and
San Francisco superior courts, ask for compensation to pay for infrastructure such
as seawalls to protect from rising seas and severe storms.
The cities are appealing a 2018 decision by U.S. District
Judge William Alsup of San Francisco to dismiss the cases as well as his
earlier decision to allow the oil companies to move the lawsuits to federal
court.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
took the cases under submission after hearing arguments at the court’s Pasadena
courthouse, and will rule at a later date. The arguments were live-streamed on
the court’s website.
Attorney Michael Rubin told the panel the cities allege the companies
“engaged in large-scale, sophisticated advertising and communication
campaigns to promote the use of their products at massive levels” while
knowing global warming “threatened severe and even catastrophic harm to
coastal cities like San Francisco and Oakland.”
He said the cities are seeking only “equitable
abatement of localized harm” under the terms of the state law.
Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer for Chevron, argued that federal
court was the right place for the cases.
“Because of the interstate and international nature of
the claims, state law can’t apply,” he contended.
U.S. Justice Department attorney Jonathan Brightbill argued
that it is up to Congress and the federal executive branch, not the judiciary,
to “set national policy relating to the complex questions related to
greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.”
Also on Wednesday, the same panel heard arguments on several
similar lawsuits filed in local superior courts against a larger number of oil
companies by San Mateo, Marin and Santa Cruz counties and the cities of Richmond,
Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach.
In those cases, a different federal judge, U.S. District
Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco, declined to allow the lawsuits to be
moved to federal court. The oil companies are appealing that decision.
Source: NBC Bay Area