Nearly five years to the day that an unprecedented heat dome descended on the Pacific Northwest, dozens of lawyers coalesced in a Portland courtroom this week to debate an extraordinary lawsuit that attempts to hold oil companies responsible for the deaths that resulted.
The $50 billion lawsuit argues that the deadly heat dome — the most extreme heat event in the region’s recorded history — was a result of the defendants’ decades-long campaign to cover up the dangers of global warming.
“Our case seeks to hold the defendants responsible under Oregon law for their deceptions and misrepresentations and failures to warn about the dangers of their fossil fuel products,” said David C. Greenstone, a lawyer for Multnomah County, which filed the suit in 2023. Those actions, he said, “caused Multnomah County to be woefully unprepared for the massive extreme heat event.”
The hearings, held over the course of two full days on Wednesday and Thursday, were to hear defendants’ motions to throw out the case. Their main argument is that federal law blocks the lawsuit, which is being heard in state court under Oregon law.
The case is one of nearly 40 lawsuits that have been filed by state and local governments across the country arguing that the fossil fuel industry should be held accountable for its role accelerating climate change. But Multnomah County’s is unique in its focus on one specific disaster, the five-day heat wave that struck in 2021.
Temperatures at the time hit 116 degrees and 69 people died, according to health officials. Most were older men who lived alone. Multnomah County includes the city of Portland.
This week, Judge Adele Ridenour, who took over the case in January, convened the hearings. The defendants’ principal argument, that federal law effectively blocks the lawsuit from proceeding, is the same one the Supreme Court is expected to hear this fall, in a closely watched climate lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder, Colo.
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., who represents Chevron, argued the key points on behalf of all the defendants. He pointed to a central tension in the cases, namely, whether they hinge on the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change or the allegations of deception.
The plaintiffs have taken pains in many of these cases to argue that they are not seeking to regulate global or interstate emissions, which would fall under federal law. Multnomah County’s lawyers argued that the companies’ in-state emissions have caused extreme weather, including the 2021 heat wave.
Mr. Boutrous cited several recent court decisions, including ones by the Maryland Supreme Court and a local court in Charleston, S.C., dismissing climate lawsuits. “The bottom line, your honor, as all of these courts have held, a state cannot impose damages for global or interstate greenhouse gas emissions, because it intrudes on a basic federal constitutional structure,” Mr. Boutrous said. He argued that only the federal government can write emissions policies with national and global ramifications. He pointed to the role of the Environmental Protection Agency, as laid out in the federal Clean Air Act, to regulate air pollution.
That line of argument led to several questions from Judge Ridenour about the E.P.A.’s decision this year to repeal a scientific conclusion called the endangerment finding, which had provided the legal foundation for federal greenhouse gas regulations. The endangerment finding was an E.P.A. conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger human health and therefore could be regulated.
“Where does that leave us?” she asked during an exchange on the subject with Mr. Greenstone.
He responded that the E.P.A.’s decision to discard the endangerment finding, and essentially step back from federal regulation of greenhouse gases, did not block Multnomah County’s case.
The county is seeking close to $52 billion, including $50 million in actual damages for costs incurred during and after the 2021 heat dome, $1.5 billion in future damages related to anticipated heat events, and “at least” $50 billion for an abatement fund to “weatherproof” the county.
The defendants also argued that they had insufficient ties to Oregon to be taken to court there.
The case is progressing amid a nationwide push for immunity laws that would protect the fossil fuel industry from lawsuits over climate change. Utah, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Iowa passed such laws this year, and federal bills have been introduced in the House and Senate, raising alarm among environmentalists.
The governors of nearly a dozen states — including California, New York and Oregon — sent a letter this week to congressional leaders urging them to reject the bills. “These proposals would trample on the rights of states and citizens,” they wrote.
There’s another wrinkle in the Multnomah County case: The defendants are also trying to have the case dismissed under an Oregon law that prohibits what are known as SLAPP lawsuits, or suits brought by powerful actors that are intended to silence critics through the threat of costly litigation. The energy companies argue that the county’s lawsuit is an attempt to silence them. Judge Ridenour is set to hold hearings on those motions in October.
