Hoboken Sues Oil Giants Over Climate Change Damages, Fraud

The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, today filed a lawsuit in state court against ExxonMobil and other major oil and gas companies, joining a growing wave of cities, counties, and states taking the fossil fuel industry to court to hold companies accountable for defrauding the public about the climate change harms they knew their products would cause.

The lawsuit argues that the companies' record of lying about the dangers associated with their products violates the state's consumer fraud statute, and provides grounds for common law claims of public and private nuisance, trespass and negligence. Other defendants include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas trade association.

Hoboken is the 20th municipality or state to sue Big Oil over climate change since 2017, the fourth to do so this year, and the first in New Jersey. The City announced the lawsuit in a press conference available here https://www.facebook.com/Hoboken

The New Jersey Senate is currently considering a bipartisan resolution that calls on the state to "pursue legal action against fossil fuel companies for damages caused by climate change."

Exxon's predecessor company until 1972 was Standard Oil of New Jersey, and ExxonMobil Corporation is still incorporated in New Jersey.

Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement:

Exxon and their co-conspirators can't run from this growing wave of climate lawsuits. Thanks to Hoboken, for the first time, Exxon will have to defend its shameful record of climate damages, disinformation, and denial on its home turf.

It takes guts to sue the most ruthless, deceitful, and unapologetic climate polluters on the planet. Hoboken's elected leaders should be applauded.

With climate costs surging everywhere and local budgets depleted, more and more communities are turning to the courts as their only recourse to make polluters pay for their fair share of the wreckage they knew their products would cause.

New Jersey is a prime example of the climate destruction Big Oil knowingly caused, from extreme storms like Sandy to rising seas and historic floods. State officials looking for ways to make New Jersey more resilient would be wise to follow Hoboken's lead and hold the companies who caused this crisis accountable for the costs.

Background on Climate Litigation:

Since 2017, 20 communities, including more than a dozen city and county governments in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Washington, and now New Jersey, along with the states of Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, 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.

This year, three separate federal appeals courts ruled that cases in California, Colorado, and Maryland should proceed in state court.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged that if elected president he would order his Department of Justice to "strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters."