The Maryland Supreme Court affirmed trial court decisions dismissing state common law claims brought by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, the City of Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County (the “local governments”) seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for harms resulting from climate change. The court’s majority concluded that state common law did not apply to the conduct alleged by the local governments and that, even if state law did apply, the local governments failed to state claims for public and private nuisance, trespass, and strict liability and negligent failure to warn. 

The court ruled that the Maryland local governments’ state law tort claims involved regulation of interstate and international pollution and would therefore be permitted only under federal law. The court rejected the local governments’ characterization of their claims as seeking redress for “deceptive and misleading commercial conduct” such as alleged concealment and denial of the connection between fossil fuel products and climate change. The court stated that “[n]o 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.” 

After surveying the “backdrop” of six federal cases concerning application of federal law to claims arising from interstate pollution, the court concluded that the local governments’ claims “fall squarely within the inherently federal areas of interstate pollution and foreign affairs and may therefore only be brought under federal law.” The court therefore held that federal common law displaced any state law claims. The court further concluded that the Clean Air Act would displace any federal common law claims involving national emissions. Citing the Second Circuit’s decision in City of New York v. Chevron Corp., the majority also determined that the Clean Air Act’s enactment did not make state law applicable, “given the federalism concerns undergirding the entire rational of federal common law,” and that the Clean Air Act itself did not authorize states to regulate the conduct at issue in the local governments’ cases. To the extent the local governments’ claims concerned foreign emissions of greenhouse gas emissions, the majority concluded that foreign policy concerns would foreclose any federal common law claims. 

The court also found that even if the local governments’ claims were not displaced or preempted, they failed to state claims as a matter of law. Regarding the local governments’ public nuisance claim, the court declined to expand common law nuisance to seek damages for conduct governed by an extensive federal statutory and regulatory framework or to require abatement of extraterritorial conduct. Regarding private nuisance, the court wrote that “[a]ssuming without deciding that there is a general public right to be free from adverse effects of climate change, the local governments, as owners of public land, fail to establish that they have suffered an injury that is different in kind from that suffered by members of the public.” Regarding trespass, the court found that the connection between the companies’ alleged activities and the alleged climate change-induced harms to the local governments’ properties was “far too attenuated” to establish a trespass claim. Regarding the failure to warn claims, the court found that the local governments failed to state claims because there was no “duty to warn the entire human race of the effects of climate change” under Maryland’s common law.

The chief justice concurred with the majority’s determination that the local governments’ state law claims were preempted but would not have addressed the alternative argument that the local governments failed to state cognizable claims. Another justice wrote a concurring opinion to explain his view that the local governments’ theory of liability was incompatible with tort law.

Two justices dissented from the majority’s determination that the local governments’ claims were displaced or preempted. The dissenting opinion stated that it was “clear from the Majority Opinion that it did not decide the case Plaintiffs brought. Rather, it decided the case Defendants described” (i.e., as “suits about emissions, global climate regulation, and the imposition of
Maryland tort law on the energy decisions of billions of people worldwide”). In the dissent’s view, the majority’s preemption inquiry had improperly focused on whether the cases’ subject matter “touches” greenhouse gas emissions rather than on the legal duty not to deceive that the local governments claimed the companies violated. The dissent further concluded that even accepting the defendants’ characterization of the local governments’ claims, the majority’s conclusion that the state law claims were preempted was faulty. One of the dissenting justices also would have denied the motions to dismiss the public nuisance and negligent failure to warn claims for failure to state a claim.

City of Baltimore lawsuit seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for climate change impacts.

Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. BP p.l.c.

<p>This entry was provided by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Please see the terms of use for citation and licensing of third party data.</p>

Maryland High Court Affirmed Dismissal of Local Governments’ State Law Climate Claims Against Fossil Fuel Companies

Filed

The Climate Litigation Database

Find climate change litigation data and indicators for {text}.

{text} litigation

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law provides Climate Litigation Database, a comprehensive database of US and Global climate change caselaw

Quickly and easily search through the complete text of thousands of climate change law and policy documents from every country.

Search the Climate Litigation Database

An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Justice is the ethical and political framework that addresses fairness, including issues of responsibility, rights, and structural inequity.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

Financial support to help individuals manage the effects of unexpected events, securing their livelihoods and increasing the resilience of people and businesses to the changing climate. It’s especially vital in developing regions where everyday risks, climate-related weather extremes, or crop failures can push people into poverty. Without insurance, people may have to resort to selling assets or cutting consumption to cope with losses.

Codes and standards are regulatory instruments that specify minimum standards to protect health and safety. This ranges from performance standards, which prescribe outcomes while allowing flexibility to achieve compliance, to the more prescriptive approach of technology-specific standards.

A ban is a legal action that prevents the sale or supply of a product or service, or that recalls a product from the market. Examples are bans on SF6, greenwashing, fossil fuel advertisement or single-use plastics.

Either money or something of monetary value is transferred between two or more organisations, people or countries.

Actions or measures to adapt freshwater systems to climate change.

Actions to adapt human health, healthcare systems and well-being to climate change.

Actions or measures to adapt freshwater, coastal and marine systems to climate change.

Hot temperature extremes are daily maximum temperatures  that were exceeded on average once in a decade or once in 50 years, and includes heatwaves.

The release of heat-trapping gases, primarily from human activities such as burning fossil fuels, agriculture and industry.

A long-lived, colourless gas, chiefly emitted from fossil fuel combustion, deforestation and cement production.

Actions to reduce emissions in energy generation and supply.

Risks to the ecosystem health of the marine environment, including ocean warming, ocean acidification, and ocean deoxygenation, harming biodiversity, species health, ecosystem services, and coastal community livelihoods.

Extreme weather refers to events where a weather variable exceeds (or falls below) a threshold. Meaning it is significantly different from the average or usual weather pattern.

A drought is an extended period of unusually dry weather marked by a significant and sustained lack of precipitation, falling below a specific threshold over a large area for more than a month

Terrestrial means "of the earth" and relates to the risks to ecological system that includes all living organisms and their interactions within land-based environments, such as forests, grasslands, and deserts.

Air pollution involves harmful contaminants in the air, affecting both indoor and outdoor environments. It can lead to health issues like respiratory diseases and heart problems, and climate impacts such as global warming. Pollutants can damage plants, trees, habitats, and water bodies like rivers and lakes.

Oil is a combustible liquid fossil fuel composed mainly of hydrocarbons, occurring as crude oil and refined into petroleum products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Fossil gas, commonly known as natural gas, is a fossil fuel consisting chiefly of methane with smaller amounts of other hydrocarbons and trace gases, found in underground deposits.

Coal is a combustible sedimentary rock formed from carbonised plant matter, rich in carbon and hydrocarbons, and occurring in several main types including hard coal and brown coal.

Work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for all, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity.

Any compulsory, unrequited payment to the government levied on corporations or individuals. This can be for environmental reasons, such as introducing a Carbon tax to set a price that emitters must pay for the greenhouse gases they emit.

Activities of industries that extract natural resources, such as mining, oil, and gas, for commercial use.

The activities of industries that transforms raw materials into finished goods through industrial processes.

Activities that involve planning, designing and building infrastructure, residential, and commercial structures.

This sector involves the wholesale and retail selling of goods.

This sector creates and distributes information and entertainment through television, radio, print, and digital platforms.

Activities of government agencies and institutions that provide public services, enforce laws and manage public resources.

This sector includes firms and individuals offering specialised expertise in fields such as law, accounting, consulting, science and engineering.

This sector involves the distribution, treatment, and conservation of water resources.

Climate change can have a range of impacts on technological system. Extreme weather events can cause infrastructure failures like power outages or damage to roads and bridges, as well as the impacts from waste following natural disasters. Human activities also cause technological impacts, such as the risks posed by oil spillage and leaks.

Slow onset events evolve gradually from incremental changes over many years or from increased frequency or intensity of recurring events. As defined in the Cancun Adaptation Framework (2010), slow onset events include risks and impacts from rising temperatures, desertification, biodiversity loss, land and forest degradation, glacial retreat, ocean acidification, sea level rise, and salinization.

Heavy precipitation refers to any form of weather where substances fall from the sky, including rain, snow, sleet, or hail.

Maryland High Court Affirmed Dismissal of Local Governments’ State Law Climate Claims Against Fossil Fuel Companies

Policy instrument

Risk

Just transition

Renewable energy

Fossil fuel

Greenhouse gas

Economic sector

Adaptation/resilience

Finance