A Seattle woman hasbrought the first-ever wrongful death lawsuitagainst big oil, claiming fossil fuel companies’ climate negligence caused her mother’s death during a major heatwave.
Juliana Leon died of hyperthermia at age 65 during the 2021 Pacific north-west heat dome – an event that killed nearly 200 people, and which meteorologists say would have been“virtually impossible” withouthuman-caused global warming.
“The day Julie died was the hottest day ever recorded in Washington with temperatures inSeattle, where Julie died, peaking around 108F,” reads the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday by Misti Leon, Juliana Leon’s daughter
Because they failed to warn the public about the dangers of planet-heating emissions, major fossil fuel companies should be held accountable for that death, the case argues.
“When a tragedy like Julie’s death results from the prolific use of fossil fuels, it is easy to dismiss the misfortune as an accident rather than a foreseeable consequence of Defendants’ deception,” the lawsuit says. It names ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and the BP-managed subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company as defendants.
The Guardian has contacted each of the companies named in the suit for comment. Shell and Phillips 66 declined to comment.
The new lawsuit represents a new frontier for climate accountability litigation, following dozens of lawsuits brought by cities and states against big oil in recent years. Previous suits accused companies of breaching product liability and consumer protection laws and engaging in fraud and racketeering. But Wednesday’s case is the first attempt to hold oil companies responsible for an individual climate-related death.
“Lethal climate disasters are the foreseeable, and foreseen, consequences of specific actions by fossil fuel corporations, CEOs and boards of directors,” Aaron Regunberg, a director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “They caused the climate crisis and deceived the public about the dangerousness of their products in order to block and delay solutions that could prevent heat deaths like Juliana’s.”
The new lawsuit is a civil case, but Regunberg hasspent yearsasserting that prosecutors could also bring criminal charges against big oil, including homicide. A 2023 report published in Harvard’s Environmental Law Review argued that oil companies could be charged with every kind of homicide charge, other than first-degree murder.
“Big oil’s victims deserve accountability,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks and supports climate accountability litigation, in a statement. “This is an industry that is causing and accelerating climate conditions that kill people. They’ve known it for 50 years, and at some point they must be held accountable.”