The nationwide campaign of climate-driven lawsuits made its way to the Maryland Supreme Court on Oct. 6, as a lawyer for Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County told justices that Marylanders had suffered costly damages from rising seas and bad weather, due to a failure by oil and gas companies to warn them that using their products would cause global warming.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Victor Sher, partner in the California-based Sher Edling law firm, stated that oil companies should be held liable due to a “failure to warn, abetted by a sophisticated campaign of disinformation.”
Defendants are British Petroleum, Chevron, CITGO, ExxonMobil, Shell and other energy companies. The lawsuits had previously been dismissed by lower courts in Maryland, on the basis that they were fundamentally an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore fell under the purview of the federal government.
In 2024, Baltimore Judge Videtta Brown dismissed the city’s lawsuit, stating that federal law governs cases involving air pollution and that “the explanation by Baltimore that it only seeks to … hold Defendants accountable for a deceptive misinformation campaign is simply a way to get in the back door what they cannot get in the front door.”
Sher argued, however, that the lawsuit was not intended to regulate emissions and therefore was not preempted by federal law.
“It does not involve capping, regulating or limiting emissions by the defendants or anybody,” he said. “It doesn’t involve changing pollution control measures or installing equipment or anything like that by these defendants or anyone else.”
Rather, Sher said, the case was about residents getting compensation for “nuisance, trespass and failure to warn.”
Some of the justices appeared skeptical regarding this argument. Justice Steven Gould asked Sher what the oil companies could do to avoid liability.
Sher responded that “they would have to warn consumers, their customers, that the products they are using are substantial causes of climate change resulting in the adverse kind of effects that these communities are suffering.”
“Those warning haven’t already been issued?” Gould asked.
“Not by these defendants,” Sher replied.
“The information itself,” Gould responded, “that’s a secret?”
Legal analysts say that, despite the fact that most of the cases against oil companies have been dismissed, the goal of climate litigants is to file a multitude of suits in hopes that a few jurisdictions may be sympathetic to their cause. For this reason, oil companies have attempted to have the cases moved to federal courts, but a petition to block a municipal suit in Hawaii was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in January, allowing the case to go to trial.
A lawsuit similar to those in Maryland was also green-lighted to go to trial in Colorado. The Trump administration sees climate litigation as a serious threat to America’s energy industry and the Justice Department filed its own lawsuits against Michigan and Hawaii in April, in an effort to halt lawsuits in those states.
Critics of climate lawsuits say that they will drive up energy prices for all Americans and deprive people of a voice in energy policy via elected officials in Congress.
“It is highly inappropriate to set national policy by litigation, and it’s even more inappropriate to set national policy via state-by-state litigation,” legal analyst John Shu told The Daily Signal.
Nationwide regulation of emissions was established by Congress with the 1970 Clean Air Act. In pursuing cases at the municipal level, however, Sher Edling is seeking billions of dollars in damages in multiple jurisdictions, drawing parallels to the tobacco lawsuits, in which cigarette makers, after losing a “failure to warn” case at trial, ultimately agreed in a 1998 settlement to pay more than $200 billion to 46 states.
“It’s a similar situation here, where the plaintiffs’ attorneys are hoping to win enough cases that [oil companies] have this looming specter of a massive loss in court, such that you end up with a global settlement,” Shu said.
Upon settlement, attorneys in the tobacco cases received billions of dollars in fees. However, Sher Edling, which reportedly represents more than 20 municipalities in climate lawsuits across the United States, is receiving financial support from wealthy donors along the way.
A 2024 report on climate lawsuits by the Senate Commerce Committee stated that “not only will Sher Edling receive approximately one-third of any amount it extracts from energy companies if it is somehow successful, far-left funds are offsetting any risk the firm would otherwise have in pursuing these absurd claims by bankrolling Sher Edling to the tune of millions of dollars each year.”
The report stated that the Resources Legacy Fund, an environmental non-profit, and the New Venture Fund, a left-wing non-profit managed by Arabella Advisors, gave Sher Edling more than $13 million since 2017.
According to a 2020 report in Forbes, the Resources Legacy Fund is funded in large part by the Rockefeller Foundation, which originally got its endowment from the Standard Oil Company, the predecessor of Exxon Mobil, founded by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller in the 19th century.
The Daily Signal reached out to Sher Edling, the New Venture Fund, Arabella Advisors, and the Resources Legacy Fund to comment for this article but did not receive a response.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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