Colorado Supreme Court: Boulder climate lawsuit can continue

BOULDER — The Colorado Supreme Court dealt a blow to the fossil-fuels industry this week by refusing to dismiss a 2018 lawsuit by Boulder and Boulder County against ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) and subsidiaries of Suncor Energy Inc. (NYSE: SU).

The state’s top panel of judges ruled that the potentially landmark case, which attempts to hold the oil giants accountable for environmental damage caused by climate change, should not be preempted by federal regulations such as the Clean Air Act and must be decided in state court. 

“The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision validates what we have long known: our communities are already bearing the devastating impacts and mounting costs of the climate crisis,” Boulder County commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said in a prepared statement. “This ruling brings us one step closer to holding accountable those who are the most responsible for altering our climate — and ensuring they contribute their fair share toward addressing the damage they’ve caused.”

The 2018 complaint from Boulder and Boulder County argued that local governments “face substantial and rising costs to lessen the impacts of human alteration of the climate (‘climate change’) on their property and to protect the health, safety and welfare of their residents.”

Because of the “substantial role they played and continue to play in causing, contributing to and exacerbating climate change,” the lawsuit contends that Suncor and Exxon should pay the governments damages to mitigate increasingly frequent natural disasters such as flooding and fires, both of which have devastated parts of Boulder County in recent years.  

Attorneys for Boulder and Boulder County have accused the oil companies of repeatedly misleading the public for years about the role that fossil fuels play in climate change. 

“This lawsuit is based on a fundamental legal principle: you have to pay your fair share for the harm that you cause. Nothing in federal law stops Colorado courts from applying that principle to the fossil fuel industry’s deception about climate change and their knowing alteration of our climate, as the Colorado Supreme Court has now found,” plaintiff attorney Marco Simons said in a prepared statement.

The case is Board of County Commissioners, city of Boulder v. Suncor Energy USA Inc., Suncor Energy Sales Inc., ExxonMobil Corp., case 2018CV30349, filed in Boulder County District Court.

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