Michigan sues Big Oil ‘cartel’

Damage to Michigan’s economy

As detailed in the Attorney General’s lawsuit, as early as the 1950s, defendants learned that fossil fuel consumption would impose ‘significantly negative externalities’ on consumers and the natural environment, but hid that information from the public.

Defendants similarly concluded that customer demand would likely favour alternative energy sources as the negative harms of fossil fuel consumption became known and the negative externality costs associated with mitigating these harms publicly understood.

Despite this, over succeeding decades defendants engaged in a multifaceted scheme to maintain the dominance of fossil fuels by suppressing the production and availability of renewable energy substitutes, using trade organisations such as the American Petroleum Institute to coordinate industry-wide efforts to delay an energy transition.

As a result of this conspiracy, and its intended and accomplished goal of suppressed competition in energy markets, Michigan consumers suffer from ‘supracompetitive’ prices for fossil fuel energy products and reduced consumer choice in purchasing alternatives, driving an energy cost crisis in the State.

Michigan also suffers high costs in the form of climate change impacts and associated costs of adaptation and mitigation, rising insurance premiums, reduced home values and damage to Michigan’s economy.

Climate accountability lawsuits

11 US states – California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan,  Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont – plus the District of Columbia and dozens of city, county and tribal governments in California, Colorado, Hawai`i, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Puerto Rico, have active lawsuits to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. These cases collectively represent more than one in four people living in the United States.

Cases from Boulder, Colorado, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, the District of Columbia and the states of Massachusetts, Vermont, Minnesota and Connecticut are advancing towards discovery and trial after courts denied the companies’ motions to dismiss them.


Lobbying for immunity

The fossil fuel industry is lobbying Congress for immunity from climate accountability lawsuits.

Last year, 16 Republican attorneys general proposed creating a ‘liability shield’ for fossil fuel companies modelled on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits.

Lawmakers in Utah and Oklahoma have also introduced state-level immunity bills for the fossil fuel industry.