Town of Carrboro v. Duke Energy Corp.

A North Carolina Superior Court dismissed the Town of Carrboro’s climate lawsuit against the public utility company Duke Energy Corporation (Duke Energy). The court described Carrboro’s suit as alleging that Duke Energy “misled the American public for decades about the effects of fossil fuel consumption on the environment” and that “as a result, the public transition to alternative forms of energy was delayed,” which materially contributed to climate change harms suffered by the Town. The court concluded that Carrboro had standing to bring the action but found that the Town’s claims were nonjusticiable under the North Carolina Supreme Court’s three-factor test for the political question doctrine. First, the court found that energy policy was “textually committed” to branches of government other than the judiciary and that issues regarding fossil fuel-related emissions were delegated to the Utilities Commission and to the Department of Environmental Quality. Second, the court found courts “lack the capacity to resolve … through traditional methods of judicial adjudication” the “multitude of unanswerable questions raised by Carrboro’s claims and theory of recovery,” including questions regarding “the unknowable issue of precisely how much influence Duke Energy’s alleged acts of deception had on energy choices made by individual members of the American public.” The court also found that Carrboro “ignores the impacts of fossil fuel-related emissions by billions of persons in other countries throughout the world.” The court wrote that “[t]he very nature of carbon emissions existing as gases that are diffused throughout the atmosphere across the globe makes any attempt to attribute a specific source of emissions to a specific climate change-related impact a futile endeavor.” The court also found persuasive the application of the political question doctrine in three climate cases in other jurisdictions: <a href="https://www.climatecasechart.com/collections/native-village-of-kivalina-v-exxonmobil-corp-_413ab5">Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp.</a>, <a href="https://www.climatecasechart.com/document/california-v-general-motors-corp_9085">California v. General Motors Corp.</a>, and <a href="https://www.climatecasechart.com/collections/city-of-charleston-v-brabham-oil-co-_a07653">City of Charleston v. Brabham Oil Co.</a> Although the court dismissed the case under the political question doctrine, the court also concluded that it was likely that “some portion” of Carrboro’s claims were preempted by federal law.

The Town of Carrboro filed a lawsuit seeking to hold Duke Energy Corporation liable for climate change-related damages that the Town alleged were caused by Duke Energy’s “knowing deception campaign concerning the causes and dangers posed by the climate crisis.” The Town alleged that Duke Energy—which the Town alleged owned, operated, and controlled numerous electric utilities that relied heavily on fossil fuels as well as numerous natural gas companies— had “understood the dangers of climate change for decades” and was among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the U.S. The complaint alleged that Duke Energy participated in a “decades-long campaign” to deceive policymakers and the public about the risks of climate change and also engaged in “widespread ‘greenwashing’ to suggest to the public that it is committed to clean energy and addressing the climate crisis.” The Town contended that these actions “delayed the critical transition away from fossil fuels and thereby materially worsened the climate crisis.” The Town alleged that it has taken actions to mitigate its contribution to climate change and that it was incurring and would continue to incur millions of dollars in damages, including impacts to roads from increasing temperatures and precipitation rates, stormwater system impacts due to more frequent heavy rainfall events, higher electricity costs due to increasing temperatures, and “recurring invasions and interferences” such as extreme temperatures, riverine and urban flooding, hurricanes, and more frequent and intense extreme precipitation. The Town asserted claims of public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, negligence, and gross negligence and sought damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, and costs and expenses, including attorneys’ fees.