Chicago Sues Big Oil Over Climate Deception

The city of Chicago filed a climate accountability lawsuit against half a dozen major oil and gas companies and their chief lobbyist group the American Petroleum Institute, charging them with deceptive conduct that resulted in escalating climate-related damages and costs incurred by the city and its residents. Chicago’s lawsuit is the latest from a US jurisdiction to target Big Oil for its alleged climate deception, and comes just five months after the state of California brought a similar climate lawsuit that was hailed as a “watershed moment” in the fight for climate accountability.

Chicago filed its complaint on Tuesday, February 20 in the Circuit Court of Cook County. The complaint alleges causes of action under state tort law, including public nuisance, negligence, and failure to warn as well as civil conspiracy and unjust enrichment and violations of local city laws concerning consumer fraud and misrepresentations relating to sales and advertising. In addition to API, the named defendants are BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, and Shell.

These companies and API knew more than 50 years ago that burning fossil fuels would have potentially catastrophic consequences for society, yet rather than publicly acknowledging this they doubled down on production and distorted the public’s understanding of climate change to protect profits, the case argues, supported by documented evidence. The petroleum industry funded front groups and campaigns to promote climate denial and block regulatory and policy responses to the looming environmental threat, which has now grown into a full-blown crisis wreaking havoc in communities across the United States and beyond.

With its legal filing, Chicago joins more than three dozen jurisdictions in the US that have turned to the courts seeking to hold the oil and gas industry liable for climate change harms.

“These companies knowingly deceived Chicago consumers in their endless pursuit of profits. As a result of their conduct, Chicago is enduring extreme heat and precipitation, flooding, sewage flows into Lake Michigan, damage to city infrastructure, and more. That all comes with enormous costs,” Alderman Matt Martin said in a press release.

The lawsuit demands that Big Oil shoulder some of these costs. Specifically, the city seeks compensatory and loss-of-use damages, penalties and fines for statutory violations, and disgorgement of profits, as well as a court order that defendants cease their deceptive conduct. While oil and gas companies no longer outright deny that climate change is real, they have shifted their misleading messaging to claiming that their products, particularly fossil gas, are climate friendly and that their industry is leading climate solutions.

Oil industry representatives and their allies slammed Chicago’s lawsuit and said courts should not be deciding climate policy. Ryan Meyers, general counsel of the American Petroleum Institute, called Chicago’s action part of an “ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project – an industry-backed campaign that pushes back against lawsuits targeting corporate polluters – said in a statement that “this litigation is not the type of action that is going to lead to meaningful solutions,” adding, “courts are simply not the appropriate places to decide climate policy.”

Chicago officials, however, say their lawsuit is not about climate policy, but about accountability.

“There is no justice without accountability. From the unprecedented poor air quality that we experienced last summer to the basement floodings that our residents on the West Side experienced, the consequences of this crisis are severe, as are the costs of surviving them,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a press release.

“Evidence shows that these Defendants intentionally misled Chicago residents about the climate change-related dangers associated with their oil and gas products,” said Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry. “We bring this lawsuit to ensure that the Defendants who have profited from the deception campaign bear responsibility for their conduct.”