AG Karl Racine Files Consumer Protection Lawsuit Against Exxon, BP, Chevron, and Shell One Day After Minnesota AG Filed Consumer Protection Case Against Exxon & Koch Industries
WASHINGTON, D.C. – District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine today filed a consumer protection lawsuit against four of the world’s biggest oil companies — Exxon, BP, Chevron, and Shell — for knowingly concealing the role their products play in causing climate change harm.
The D.C. lawsuit comes one day after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a similar consumer fraud lawsuit against Exxon, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute. A consumer protection suit filed against Exxon by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey last year is now proceeding in state court.
“Two new lawsuits filed against Big Oil in two days shows the strength and momentum of legal efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for lying about climate change,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity. “It has been a very bad week for corporate polluters and climate deniers, and a very good week in the fight to hold Big Oil accountable for its lies and deception. We applaud Attorney General Racine for bringing this case. The residents of D.C. deserve their day in court.”
“The District of Columbia today stood up to mega polluters like ExxonMobil who have harmed vulnerable DC residents for decades,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “The heatwaves are bigger and the flooding from the Potomac is greater. The lawsuit filed today accurately asserts that these fossil fuel companies misled consumers about the harm of their products and the impacts of climate change. Now legal justice and compensation must flow to the Capital’s injured residents.”
A copy of the D.C. lawsuit is available here https://oag.dc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/DC-v-Exxon-BP-Chevron-Shell-Filed-Complaint.pdf
This is the second consumer protection action filed in D.C. against Exxon in recent months. In May, the non-profit group Beyond Pesticides filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Exxon that asked the D.C. Superior Court to order the oil giant to cease its “false and deceptive marketing” about its role in climate change.
Background on Climate Accountability Lawsuits:
The consumer protection lawsuits filed by Massachusetts, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia are among a growing number of cases that seek to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change deception. Since 2017, more than a dozen city and county governments in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, and Washington have brought lawsuits under different claims to recover billions of dollars damages caused by the oil and gas industry’s deception about climate change. Learn about those other cases here.
Contact: Mike Meno, Center for Climate Integrity, mike@climateintegrity.org or 919-307-6637
Mike Tidwell, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org or 240-460-5838
The Center for Climate Integrity, a project of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, launched in 2017 to educate the public and policymakers about the massive costs of coping with the damage attributable to global warming and to support efforts to make climate polluters pay their fair share.
For more information on what ExxonMobil and others in the industry knew about climate change and when, check out the Center for Climate Integrity’s “Smoking Guns” document archive or visit PayUpClimatePolluters.org.
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