Supreme Court questions Big Oil effort to duck liability

摘要

The Supreme Court expressed concern today that attorneys for the oil and gas industry were hiding elephants in mouse holes in a wonky jurisdictional battle with high stakes for climate change litigation. During oral arguments in BP PLC v. Baltimore, justices posited that industry lawyers might be leveraging a dispute over a narrow technical question to quash lawsuits by state and local governments contending that energy companies should be on the hook for flooding, wildfires and other disasters fueled by rising global temperatures.