Rhode Island’s first-in-the-nation state lawsuit against fossil fuel companies continues into its seventh year after surviving an attempt by one of the defendants to gut the state’s case on alleged procedural violations.
Rhode Island Associate Justice William E. Carnes in an April 22 decision, rejected all of the arguments made by Chevron Corporation.
Chevron was one of 21 oil and gas companies sued for its role in exacerbating climate change in a landmark state climate change lawsuit brought by then-Attorney General Peter Kilmartin in 2018. The complaint seeks damages from fossil fuel companies on the assertion that for each company, “a substantial portion of fossil fuel products are or have been extracted, refined, transported, traded, distributed, marketed, promoted, manufactured, sold, and/or consumed in Rhode Island.”
After years of appeals, concluding after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case in April 2023, Chevron returned to state court seeking to have a portion of the case thrown out. The company contended the state failed to investigate or prove that any fossil fuel extraction, refinement or production occurred in Rhode Island, violating a clause of state court civil procedure known as Rule 11.
Attorneys for both sides made their case before Carnes in an April 16 hearing in Providence County Superior Court.
Carnes in his 15-page decision concluded there was no evidence of improper actions by the state — at least, not enough to meet the “high bar” of imposing penalties for Rule 11 violations.
“The Court must balance competing concerns when evaluating whether to issue sanctions because sanctions ‘can haunt an attorney throughout his or her career’ with ‘ramifications [that] go far beyond the particular case,’” Carnes wrote, quoting from a 2017 state Supreme Court decision reversing a lower court’s sanctions against an attorney in the case.
Carnes’ rejection of Chevron’s pleadings does not signal an outcome on the overall decision in the case, including potentially awarding damages from fossil fuel companies. The next hearing in the case is slated for May 8, according to the public court docket.
Timothy Rondeau, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General, praised Carnes’ decision.
“We are grateful for Judge Carnes’ careful consideration, evaluation, and ultimate conclusion that the State acted properly,” Rondeau said in a statement Thursday. “We look forward to continuing to fight on behalf of Rhode Islanders and for environmental justice.”
‘And/or’
While legal precedent demands a specific standard to penalize attorneys for procedural violations, there is no formal court ruling or history on the use of “and/or,” another key part of Chevron’s legal arguments. Attorneys for Chevron insisted the state’s use of “and/or” in its original complaint meant it must prove that all of listed fossil fuel activities — manufacturing, refinement, sales and more — were performed by each company in Rhode Island. Attorneys for the state countered that the “and/or” caveat meant at least one, but not all, of the listed activities, could be proven.
Carnes’ conclusion?
“Rhode Island has not formally adopted any legal precedent around the use of ‘and/or,’ and, even if Rhode Island courts had done so, the State’s Complaint is not improper because the contested allegations are well grounded in fact based on the State’s interpretation of paragraph 21(g) and Chevron’s filings with the State of Rhode Island,” he wrote.
He also pushed back against Chevron’s citations from the websites of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources and the U.S. Department of Energy, both of which said there is no oil production or refinement in Rhode Island. Carnes’ noted that the federal information was outdated — based on data from 2011 to 2014 — while the state website information does not specify if petroleum-based fuels were ever produced in Rhode Island, simply that they are not locally produced at present.
Other exhibits filed by attorneys for the state, including business filings with the Rhode Island Department of State, suggest Chevron and its subsidiaries have done sales business in Rhode Island as recently as 2024.
“It cannot be fairly said that the allegations which Chevron has moved to strike have no relation to the controversy because the State provided evidence that Chevron may have had Rhode Island manufacturing, refining, and other raw material activities,” Carnes wrote.
Carnes on April 16 ordered Chevron to hand over additional documentation regarding its business activity in Rhode Island. The company has 90 days to turn over evidence to the state for its case.
Judges in four other states, including New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and New York have tossed similar state, county or city-level challenges against fossil fuel companies. But dozens more remain under consideration in state-level courts across the country, including in Massachusetts.
And in March, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the bid led by Republican state attorneys general that would have blocked these lawsuits from proceeding.
Theodore Boutrous, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in California representing Chevron, pointed to the dismissals in other state courts in a response Thursday to Carnes’ decision.
“As the New Jersey Superior Court held in dismissing New Jersey’s similar state lawsuit, ‘the leading and most persuasive case supporting dismissal is the Second Circuit decision in City of New York,’” Boutrous said in an emailed statement. “There, the federal appeals court rejected the availability of state tort law in the climate change context.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
