Maryland top court rejects climate change lawsuits against oil companies

By Nate Raymond

March 25 (Reuters) - Maryland's highest court has rejected efforts by three municipal and county governments to hold major oil and gas companies including Exxon MobilXOM.N, BPBP.L and ChevronCVX.N responsible for helping cause climate change.

In a ruling that came as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to consider whether similar cases should be allowed to proceed in other states, the Maryland Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the dismissal of lawsuits filed by Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.

Those lawsuits sought to recover damages from the multinational companies based on allegations that they deceived consumers and the public about the dangers associated with their fossil fuel products, which contribute to greenhouse-gas pollution and climate change.

The lawsuits alleged that their products were tied to the emission of a substantial amount of the greenhouse-gas pollution released into the atmosphere for the last five decades, causing sea levels to rise and other environmental impacts affecting the local governments' property and citizens.

The lawsuits asserted claims arising under Maryland law including for public and private nuisance, strict liability and negligent failure to warn and trespass.

But the Maryland Supreme Court, on a 6-1 vote, ruled those lawsuits must be dismissed in their entirety, with five justices in the majority holding that the local governments’ state law claims are preempted by federal law.

Justice Brynja Booth, writing for the majority, said that for over a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that cases involving the regulation of interstate pollution arise under federal law, meaning that any state law claims the local governments asserted were displaced by federal law.

"No amount of creative pleading can masquerade the fact that the local governments are attempting to utilize state law to regulate global conduct that is purportedly causing global harm," Booth wrote.

Justices Shirley Watts and Peter Killough dissented from parts of the majority's ruling and disagreed with the preemption holding, though only Killough would have held that any part of the state law claims could survive dismissal.

Killough said the companies in seeking to fight off what amounted to fraud cases "invoked the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulatory authority, and the specter of a patchwork of state tort regimes supplanting a uniform federal emissions policy."

"It was a compelling, if misleading, frame, and the Majority accepted it entirely," Killough wrote. "But not a single emissions regulation is implicated in this case."

Sara Gross, chief of the affirmative litigation division of the Baltimore City Department of Law, in a statement said the city agreed with Killough's dissent.

The Maryland high court handed down its ruling a month after the 6-3 conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar case by officials in Boulder, Colorado in a dispute that could affect dozens of similar lawsuits around the country.

In that case, the Colorado Supreme Court last year rejected arguments by Exxon, Suncor Energy and other companies that Boulder's lawsuit would interfere with the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

"Claims for climate-related damages under state laws are precluded by clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent," Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer for Chevron at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said in a statement.

The case is Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. BP P.L.C., et al, Maryland Supreme Court, No. SCM-REG-0011-2025.

For the local governments: Vic Sher of Sher Edling

For Chevron: Theodore Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

Read more:

US Supreme Court to hear bid by oil companies to toss climate suits

Energy companies win dismissal of Baltimore's climate change case