Platkin v. Exxon Mobil Corp.

The federal district court for the District of New Jersey granted the motion by the New Jersey Attorney General, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the Acting Director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs to remand to state court their lawsuit asserting claims against fossil fuel industry defendants for allegedly misrepresenting their products’ effects on the climate. The court noted that the defendants no longer contested remand due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of petitions for writ of certiorari seeking review of decisions upholding remand orders in other cases. The district court further found that remand was “clearly warranted” in this case because the Third Circuit’s decision affirming remand orders in Hoboken’s and Delaware’s cases “fatally forecloses” each of the defendants’ jurisdictional arguments (complete preemption, Grable jurisdiction, jurisdiction under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, federal officer removal jurisdiction, and federal enclave jurisdiction, although the court noted that the Third Circuit had not addressed the federal enclave jurisdiction argument but that four other circuit courts of appeal had uniformly rejected it). The court denied the plaintiffs’ request for attorneys’ fees incurred as a result of removal, noting that the defendants “consistently and candidly acknowledged” that the Third Circuit’s decision foreclosed their jurisdictional arguments and that they “correctly pointed out” that they would have been precluded from seeking removal had they waited for the Supreme Court to rule on the certiorari petitions. The court found that the defendants “offered colorable reasons to believe that the Supreme Court would at least consider, if not overturn, the existing precedent” and that the plaintiffs offered “little evidence that this brief detour to federal court prejudiced them.”

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The New Jersey Superior Court concluded that federal law preempted State of New Jersey plaintiffs’ climate change claims against fossil fuel industry defendants. The court therefore dismissed the case with prejudice for failure to state a claim. The plaintiffs were the New Jersey Attorney General, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the Acting Director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. They asserted eight state law causes of action based on their allegations that the defendants deceived consumers, the public, and decision-makers regarding the climate risks created by their products and that the deception resulted in increased emissions of greenhouse gases that caused climate change impacts in New Jersey. The court said its decision was “reliant upon and consistent with both federal and state courts across the country that have rejected the availability of state tort law in the climate change context,” with “[m]any of these courts conclusions flow[ing], in part,” from the Supreme Court’s 2011 opinion in <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/american-electric-power-co-v-connecticut/">American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut</a>. The court concluded that these cases “compel dismissal of claims seeking damages by transboundary emissions” and found that, regardless of how the plaintiffs characterized their allegations, they were seeking damages for impacts of interstate and international emissions. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that state law could govern in this case because the Clean Air Act had displaced federal common law. The court noted that the Second Circuit had described this argument as “too strange to seriously contemplate” in <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/city-new-york-v-bp-plc/">City of New York v. Chevron Corp.</a> and agreed with the defendants’ arguments that displacement of otherwise applicable federal common law by the Clean Air Act “did not somehow render state law competent to apply to this exclusively federal subject matter.” The court also noted that the Clean Air Act had not displaced federal common law with respect to international emissions. The court said the Hawai‘i Supreme Court’s decision was not persuasive because it did not address the “critical point” about the competency of state law to apply when a federal statute displaces federal common law.

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