Leon v. Exxon Mobil Corp.

The federal district court for the Western District of Washington remanded a climate change-related wrongful death action to state court. The plaintiff seeks to hold manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of fossil fuels liable under product liability and public nuisance theories for her mother’s death during the Pacific Northwest heat dome event in 2021. The court rejected the defendants’ position that there was federal diversity jurisdiction because one of the defendants—a company that owned a pipeline—had been fraudulently joined. The court was satisfied that the pipeline owner was a citizen of Washington. The court further found that the defendants did not meet their “heavy burden” of demonstrating that the company could not be liable for violating Washington’s product liability and public nuisance statutes. The court also concluded that the defendants’ arguments regarding procedural misjoinder were without merit because they raised state law issues that did not implicate federal subject matter jurisdiction. The court denied the plaintiff’s request for fees and costs, finding that removal was not “objectively unreasonable.”

Chevron Corporation and Chevron U.S.A. Inc. (Chevron) filed a notice of their removal to federal court of a wrongful death action filed by the daughter of a woman who died from hyperthermia in Seattle during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome. All other fossil fuel industry defendants consented to the removal of the litigation. Chevron argued that there was diversity jurisdiction in federal district court because “the single purported Washington Defendant, Olympic Pipe Line Company LLC [(Olympic)], has been fraudulently joined and procedurally misjoined.” Chevron contended that “deception-based claims” could not be asserted against Olympic, which “merely transports fossil fuels—the company does not produce, let alone market to consumers, any fossil fuels,” and that even if a claim could be stated against Olympic, it would not arise out of the same transaction or occurrence as the claims against the other defendants.

A trial court in Washington State denied fossil fuel industry defendants’ motion to stay proceedings pending the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of <a href="https://www.climatecasechart.com/collections/board-of-county-commissioners-of-boulder-county-v-suncor-energy-u-s-a-inc-_be5980">Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County</a>. The Washington trial court found that the outcome of the Boulder proceedings was “far from certain,” including whether the Court would issue a substantive ruling and whether the Court would resolve the issues in this case. The court also found that a potentially 14-month stay could prejudice the plaintiff’s ability to conduct discovery, that the public interest weighed against the stay, and that potential prejudice to the defendants was mitigated by the fact that some documents had already been preserved and some discovery had already been conducted in other similar cases.