Courts, crime & arrests (Credit: Pexels)
County lawsuit accused BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Shell, American Petroleum of leading ongoing campaigns to cover up their products’ environmental risks
A Bucks County lawsuit against several major oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute continues to make its way through the court system after its dismissal last year by a Bucks County judge.
The county’s ruling is pending appeal in Commonwealth Court. But last week, on behalf of the commonwealth, State Attorney General David Sunday filed an amicus (or “friend of the court”) brief supporting the decision by Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Stephen Corr to dismiss the county’s climate case.
The state attorney general points out federal law supersedes conflicting state and county law and it is the federal government’s responsibility for addressing global emissions and problems emanating from them. Sunday also wrote that Bucks County’s climate lawsuit negatively impacts Pennsylvania, the second-largest natural gas producer in the U.S. after Texas, and the third largest coal-producing state after Wyoming and West Virginia.
And because the energy sector employs hundreds of thousands of workers in Pennsylvania, it is integral to the commonwealth’s economy. Sunday also noted that there was no discussion prior to the county commissioners’ announcement at a public meeting that the county had filed a climate lawsuit against several major oil companies alleging they had deceived the public about the role fossil fuels play in worsening global warming.
The lawsuit was filed on March 25, 2024, and initially supported by all three county commissioners: Democrats Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie, and Republican Gene DiGirolamo, notably one year after a torrential rainstorm and subsequent flash flooding that killed seven people in the county.
The county lawsuit accused BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute of leading ongoing campaigns to cover up their products’ environmental risks. And the suit cited severe weather events the county claimed were due to warming resulting from fossil fuel industry practices.
The events included flooding that was allegedly worsened by rising tidal waters in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Harvie, then vice chair of the Board of Commissioners, said that some of the biggest companies in the world were deliberately engaged in deceptive business practices.
The lawsuit sought monetary awards for storm damage repairs and stormwater management measures. The county was represented by the DiCello Levitt law firm with offices in New York and Washington, D.C.
