Gulf Coast homeowners sue ExxonMobil due to Global Warming claims

[Nitrogen]

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-11-22-climate-change-lawsuits_N.htm

A group of 12 Mississippi Gulf Coast homeowners is using a novel legal strategy to try to recoup losses suffered during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The lawsuit seeks damages from a group of 33 energy companies, including ExxonMobil and coal giant Peabody Energy, electric utilities, and other conglomerates for allegedly emitting greenhouse gases that the litigants say contributed to global warming.

I find this troubling, even though I do believe the science behind global warming and believe greenhouse gases are a contributing cause to it.

Even if you accept this, how can someone sue an energy company for this?  Energy companies aren't doing anything illegal in providing energy.  It seems like a rotten precident to set, to make someone liable for damages for not doing anything illegal under the law.  I couldn't even go so far as to say they are negligent either.  They are providing goods/services that peole need, in which there is no real alternative for yet...

[taurusowner]

And of course there is the blinding gap of logic in thinking "global warming" caused Katrina, and thus their homes to be destroyed.  Because there were certainly no hurricanes flooding below-sea-level coastal areas before those evil oil companies.

[mellestad]

What would they sue for?  How would they show direct harm?

I guess maybe they could try to show a conspiracy to hide evidence of fossil fuel created global warming, but the road from that to liability for a hurricane seems like a very long one...especially since the science is in no way advanced enough to say what the hurricane season would be like without current CO2 levels.


I just don't see this going far, nothing is concrete enough and there is no law (that I am aware of) about selling a product that emits CO2.  The cigarrette cases were hard enough and they had a more limited scope, more understood science, a seemingly clear conspiracy, long known risks and a history of health regulation.

[Gewehr98]

It's for the children? 

[AZRedhawk44]

Perhaps they should sue all the consumers of those electric and petroleum companies, too.  After all, gas doesn't burn unless it is consumed.

[Ben]

I'd be interested to see what NGOs might be in the shadows behind the homeowners and their attorney.

[RocketMan]

How did they find an attorney willing to take this on in the first place?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

How did they find an attorney willing to take this on in the first place?

Easy, they offered money.  Probably someone else's.

[Standing Wolf]

How did they find an attorney willing to take this on in the first place?

Probably mentioned it was going to be a law suit for money.

[Waitone]

Suing the wrong entity.  Should be suing George Bush since he was the one steering hurricanes at the time.

[HankB]

Maybe ExxonMobil should be billing them for global warming, which has largely prevented damaging hurricanes from hitting the USA since Katrina. 

[Desertdog]

I think that they may have just run into a wall.

Senator to demand probe of global-warming 'fraud'
'They cooked the science to make this thing look as if it was settled'

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117017

[French G.]

Al Queda had a message praising the hurricane as a soldier for Allah. Sue Al queda, ought to be fun to depose. Better yet, cut out the middleman and sue Allah. Ought to be a real popular area not to be near, that courthouse.

Or, can the rest of us sue whoever passed Federal flood insurance which provides incentives(our money) to keep building ridiculous beach houses  in dangerous areas? Better yet, let's sue everyone who ever built a vacation home at the shore, you want to know how much environmental damage was done producing all those building materials for homes most people don't even live in? All ideas no more absurd than suing the oil companies.

[De Selby]

A group of 12 homeowners? Probably one of them is a bad attorney who dreamed up this scheme and sold his HOA on it.

This has very little chance of going anywhere.  Of course, I say that recognising that everyone said the same thing about tobacco lawsuits....the naysayers were only about $7 billion off on that one.

I think excessive pollution should be controlled, since, global warming or otherwise, it impinges on people's lifestyles without them having a say in its production. 

Suing for hurricane katrina though? This is tantamount to someone suing Rush Limbaugh for civil rights violations under GW, on the theory that if Rush hadn't hit the airwaves, Bush would never have been elected.  In other words, a ridiculous stretch.

[richyoung]

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-11-22-climate-change-lawsuits_N.htm

I find this troubling, even though I do believe the science behind global warming and believe greenhouse gases are a contributing cause to it.

WHAT "science"?  There is no science backing that clap-trap up.....

[AZRedhawk44]

Probably mentioned it was going to be a law suit for money.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823109149

Here's a link so you can replace the one you ruined more easily.

[brimic]

I hope they win the suit.

Their settlement should only be paid if those who are suing sign an agreement to never buy another gasoline/deisel product or ever use electricity again.

[Seenterman]

Their settlement should only be paid if those who are suing sign an agreement to never buy another gasoline/deisel product or ever use electricity again.
 

Not even, the settlement should only be paid if these 12 never used an electricity, gas, or deisel product in the first place. If they had used said means of energy they are all co conspirators!

Then again if its 12 Amish people suing, uhh we might have a problem. 

[MechAg94]

There is probably an environmental/global warming group helping fund this.

[Stand_watie]

How did they find an attorney willing to take this on in the first place?

    Read John Grisham. While I  don't care for his politics, I think he's hit the nail on the head regarding the state of Tort law in Mississipi particularly, and the U.S. in general.