Baltimore mrylnd

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climate lawsuits

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AN 10 26

Baltimore City and county residents are currently under a voluntary water restriction. Baltimore City residents and the surrounding areas in Baltimore, Howard, Harford, and Carroll Counties are experiencing drought conditions. Matthew Garbark, director of Baltimore City's Department of Public Works, told WBAL that the Prettyboy Reservoir, the northernmost reservoir of the City, has dropped to 20-year lows.

This summer's weather made an already parched water supply from the neighboring Prettyboy, Liberty, and Loch Raven reservoirs worse. To combat the issue, Baltimore City has begun the process of blending water from the Susquehanna River with its reservoir supply. The blending process is taking place at the Montebello Water Treatment Plant. There, the water will undergo a series of treatments to ensure it is safe to drink.

The Baltimore City Department of Public Works (DPW) urges residents to conserve water and limit nonessential use, such as watering lawns and reducing shower time, as it monitors rainfall, stream flows, reservoir levels, and water demand.

Simultaneously, residents may notice discoloration and an altered smell and taste in their water in some areas, though not much is expected, as the department says the blended water flows through all the same filters and treatments. Paul Sayan, who oversees Baltimore City’s water system, told The Baltimore Banner the blending should not impact the water quality, and if it does, the impact will be minimal. Officials promise the water is still safe to drink.

Residents are trusting officials’ advice but are also proceeding with caution. "I think if they can assure that it's safe through scientific study, then that's fine with me," Lana, a Baltimore resident, told CBS News. "I'll definitely be checking and seeing if I can tell a difference there."

The initial blended supply from the Susquehanna River will only make up about 20-40% of the overall water supply. 30 million gallons of water per day will be withdrawn from the river. As for what can get the water levels back to normal in the reservoirs, officials say steady rainfall is required for restoration.

According to Garbark, this is not a foreign practice. "This is something that is normal for our system. We've done it in the past. This is by no means the worst drought, but this is something that is going to be here if we don't get any more rain. These pumps will run, and we're going to be using this water," he said in his interview with WBAL.

While the Flint water crisis was caused by a different reason, the concerns for potential impacted residents long-term are similar. In Flint, the issue was due to the city’s decision to switch the city’s drinking water source to the Flint River from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department via Lake Huron to save costs. In the process, the city failed to apply required corrosion-control chemicals during its filtration process. As a result, residents of Flint, Michigan, were exposed to toxic lead and bacteria. The crisis lasted for five years, from 2014 to 2019.

Baltimore City and county residents have been dealing with water issues for years, drawing comparisons to that of Flint. In January of this year, a water main burst the day before a nor'easter, leaving some residents without running water for days.

In the summer of 2022, Baltimore barely avoided a Flint-like water crisis when an unpaid vendor invoice threatened to disrupt deliveries of chemicals essential to water treatment. Separately, the city was grappling with long-standing lead contamination stemming from aging infrastructure and exposure risks in schools.

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an 9 24

Former President Donald Trump's effort to reach Black voters in Baltimore this week seemed to go awry, as local news station WYPR reported that a "Black Republicans for Trump" event in the city drew a "tiny crowd."

Additionally, reports local news station WBALTV, many local residents who were in the area were not pleased to have a Trump rally there.

"Why would you send Trump people here in our area?" asked local resident Leslie Harvey. "It don't make sense for them to send someone out and thinking someone's going to follow you that way."

"I'm extremely shocked and angry and appalled, and it's disrespectful to have this here, whatever it is," local resident Tiana Smith told the WBALTV. "It's a slap in the face. He clearly said he's not for the Black community or anybody else."

ALSO READ:Six House Republicans throw a wrench in Trump plan to block a Harris win

Speakers at the event tried to make the case that Trump was really good for Black voters during his first term, despite the fact that he regularly deployed race-baiting rhetoric and analysts estimate fewer than 10 percent of Black voters suppo'Black Republicans for Trump' rally flops with 'tiny crowd' — and angry locals: reportrted him in 2020.

And with regards to Baltimore specifically, Trump once infamously trashed it as a "rat and rodent-infested mess."

"We know what he's going to do for us," Christopher Anderson of the Black Conservative Federation told the small crowd at the rally. "When he was in power, his administration had a platinum plan just for Black folks."

local election official?!

chrisanderson2020

worried about immigrants

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524

the leaders of a years-long Congressional probe into Big Oil’s decades-long climate disinformation campaigns just formally referred their investigation to the Department of Justice, calling on the nation’s biggest law office to “pursue further investigation and take any appropriate legal action, as it has in similar cases involving the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.”

In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland today, Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse and House Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote that they believe that “there is adequate evidence that fossil fuel industry companies and trade associations may have violated one or more federal statutes and that, accordingly, further investigation is warranted.”

The referral comes after the committees released a joint report at the end of April that unveiled thousands of “new documents exposing the fossil fuel industry’s role in spreading climate disinformation and preventing action on climate change.” The documents, revealing oil giants’ internal strategies to greenwash their climate records and downplay the harms of “natural” gas while further investing in fossil fuel production, came out of a House Oversight Committee investigation into ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that began in 2021.

At a hearing on May 1, former DOJ attorney Sharon Eubanks, who led the Justice Department’s case against Big Tobacco, testified that “Just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering complaint against the industry, given the similarities of the fraudulent acts, and the government’s successful case against tobacco, there is adequate foundation for building a case… We should not waste any more time wringing our hands about what can be done.”

Whitehouse and Raskin announced the referral at a press conference today, where Whitehouse called on the Justice Department to “commence a proper inquiry into whether charges should be brought and what charges should be brought” against Big Oil and made the comparison to civil racketeering charges the department brought against the tobacco industry.

“The end result was that the [tobacco] industry was ordered to stop future fraudulent statements and correct fraudulent statements,” he said, before reading Judge Gladys Kessler’s famous ruling against Philip Morris and other tobacco majors, slightly altered to replace references to those companies with mentions of climate change and Big Oil. “The complaint writes itself,” he said.

Following Congress’s investigation, Raskin emphasized the importance of an effort by the executive branch, which “takes care that the laws are faithfully executed and implemented,” to take accountability efforts to another level and provide a “second chance for America and the world to address the climate crisis.”

“If there’s no accountability, and there’s no truth, then there’s no progress,” Raskin said today. “The deception and the deceit must end for us to seriously confront the magnitude of the climate crisis that we are in.”

Fossil fuel majors have kept members of Congress busy since that latest hearing on May 1. Last week, Raskin used his position as ranking Oversight Committee member to request documents from several oil and gas companies — including Exxon and Chevron — whose executives were reportedly offered major tax breaks and policy rewards in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations by Donald Trump. “Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions,” he wrote in a letter to the companies’ bosses.

Lawmakers have been calling for a DOJ probe into Big Oil for nearly a decade. Those calls grew even louder last year, when Representative Ted Lieu and Senator Richard Blumenthal led more than a dozen U.S. representatives and senators in a letter calling for Attorney General Garland to look into “Shell, ExxonMobil, and potentially other fossil fuel companies to determine whether their coordinated campaigns of climate change deception violated federal law.” After new evidence was uncovered of Shell’s early knowledge and subsequent denial about the dangers its products would cause, Lieu told*ExxonKnews* in January that those requests were “even more urgent.”

The referral is the latest sign that legal pressure against Big Oil is mounting, as the state of Michigan prepares to sue the industry for climate damages, accountability lawsuits brought by Anne Arundel and Annapolis were just greenlit for pre-trial discovery by a Maryland judge, and the companies are pleading the Supreme Court to bail them out.

Last year, the DOJ reversed the previous administration’s support of oil companies in fighting climate accountability cases filed by state and local governments, throwing its support behind the communities on a procedural issue after U.S. senators, state attorneys general, and even lawmakers from Biden’s home state urged them to.

But Whitehouse and Raskin’s plea today is for the Justice Department to go further and launch its own actions to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. Whether Merrick Garland and the Justice Department will be responsive remains to be seen.

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gmail 2 24

Maryland communities move one step closer to putting Big Oil on trial following appeals court ruling.

Communities in Maryland are closer than ever to putting Big Oil on trial after a federal appeals court this week once again rejected industry attempts to escape facing accountability for their climate lies. The ruling continues the unbroken string of judicial wins for local governments seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their decades-long campaign of climate deception in state court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously rejected oil majors’ — including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute — attempts to stop cases in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, from moving forward in state court, where they were originally filed. The Fourth Circuit issued a similar ruling in favor of the City of Baltimore’s climate accountability lawsuit in 2022.

Oil and gas companies have attempted to remove many of the climate accountability lawsuits they’re facing from state court, only to be repeatedly shut down by courts time and again.

Federal district courts across the nation have now rejected these same oil industry arguments a total of 17 times, including in Vermont, Minnesota, D.C., California, Hawai’i, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, and Colorado. Those rulings have been affirmed 11 times by eight separate federal appeals courts.

“The companies have sought—over and over and over—to remove the cases to federal court,” wrote Judge Toby Heytens in the unanimous ruling for Annapolis and Anne Arundel County. “By our count, that gambit has failed in at least ten cases already. The eleventh time is not the charm.”

In 2021, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson wrote that Big Oil’s arguments for federal jurisdiction in accountability lawsuits brought by state and local governments have “a batting average of .000.” More than two years later, that’s still the case.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, along with nearly two dozen other fossil fuel defendants named in a climate liability suit by the city of Baltimore, have asked a state court to dismiss the case, in part because they maintain it is a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech

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[### Judge Deals Latest Blow to Big Oil in DC Climate Fraud Case

DeSmog

https://www.desmog.com › 2022/11/21 › judge-blow-...](https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/21/judge-blow-big-oil-dc-climate-fraud-case/)

Nov 21, 2022 — We filed our lawsuit to expose these big oil companies' rampant deception and stop it. Today our case takes an important step forward.

In recent years, communities across the United States increasingly have turned to the courts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for alleged fraud — which has worsened the climate crisis — and now those lawsuits are inching towards trial. Despite dogged attempts from industry lawyers to force the litigation into federal courts, where they see an easier path to dismissal, they continue to strike out as judges from California to Connecticut rule that state courts are the appropriate venues for these climate accountability lawsuits.

The latest addition to the fossil fuel industry’s long procedural losing streak came on November 12 when a federal district judge decided that the District of Columbia’s climate liability lawsuit belongs in the local court, where it was originally filed in June 2020. As with other climate liability lawsuits, lawyers for the oil and gas companies in the District of Columbia case devised a multitude of arguments claiming that only federal courts have the jurisdiction or authority to handle such lawsuits. But federal courts have not been buying these legal theories.

“Defendants raise seven theories for the Court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. Each, they say, is an independent ground for removal. None is,” Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in his recent opinion. He joins twelve other federal district judges and five appeals courts in dismissing all of the fossil fuel companies’ arguments for federal jurisdiction. Several of the appeals courts have even ruled twice to affirm that state courts are the right venue for these cases.

IFrame Content

Statement from District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine on the recent federal ruling on his case.

The District of Columbia’s case is among two dozen lawsuits filed by cities, counties, and states against the fossil fuel industry over its role in attacking climate science and spreading disinformation in order to stave off climate action and protect profits. A handful of coastal California communities brought the first of these cases in 2017. Since then, the lawsuits have been bogged down in procedural wrangling.

Local and state governments are making claims under local and state laws, invoking issues such as product liability – used to hold manufacturers responsible for selling a defective or harmful product- and consumer protection – designed to protect against misleading marketing and fraud — and have filed their complaints in state courts. Fossil fuel companies are pushing the cases to federal courts, fighting tooth and nail to avoid litigating in state courts, where they could face discovery and trial.

“Chevron respectfully disagrees with the district court’s decision remanding this climate change action to the District of Columbia municipal court. This case belongs in federal court because climate change is a global phenomenon that requires a coordinated federal policy response, not a patchwork of lawsuits brought in municipal and state courts,” Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, and counsel for Chevron Corporation, said in an emailed statement.

“The industry’s efforts to keep the cases from proceeding in state court for almost six years now indicates that, contrary to its public messaging otherwise, it thinks there’s a reason to be worried,” Karen Sokol, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, told DeSmog via email.

One advocate for polluter accountability suggested that these procedural maneuvers represent the fossil fuel industry’s strategic bid for swift dismissal of the cases through federal courts.

“Once again, the courts have seen through Big Oil’s attempts to mischaracterize these cases, and now the people of D.C. are one step closer to having their day in court,” Alyssa Johl, vice president of legal at the Center for Climate Integrity – which campaigns for holding climate polluters accountable — said in an emailed statement.

The District of Columbia case, brought by Attorney General Karl Racine two years ago, names oil majors BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell as defendants. It alleges they misled District consumers around the climate consequences of their products and continue to mislead through deceptive advertising and greenwashing. The lawsuit contends that this behavior violates the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act.

IFrame Content

“Independently and through coordinated campaigns and industry front groups, Defendants have deceived D.C. consumers about how Defendants’ fossil fuel products warm the planet and disrupt the climate in a quest to drive profits through increased sales of gas and other fossil fuel products. Defendants continue to mislead D.C. consumers to this day,” the complaint states.

The District of Columbia and others bringing these climate liability lawsuits say their claims are based on the deceptive conduct of the fossil fuel companies, not on the emissions or production of fossil fuels. The companies, however, have tried to paint the cases as attacking production.

“We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government, supported by action from all business sectors, including ours, and from civil society, is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress,” said Natalie Gunnell, spokesperson for the Shell Group, which is named in the District of Columbia suit and several similar cases.

However, Judge Kelly and other judges have pushed back against this framing that centers the cases in this way.

“The ‘charged conduct’ here is Defendants’ false advertising – not fossil fuel production en masse,” Judge Kelly noted in his opinion.

Similarly, in a ruling issued this April, an appellate court recognized that Baltimore was suing oil and gas companies not over the production and sale of fossil fuel products, but for mispresenting the climate harms of these products. As the court wrote, “it is the concealment and misrepresentation of the products’ known dangers – and the simultaneous promotion of their unrestrained use – that allegedly drove consumption, and thus greenhouse gas pollution, and thus climate change.”

That Baltimore ruling followed a directive from the U.S. Supreme Court that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and three other appeals courts review all of the arguments for federal jurisdiction from the fossil fuel companies. Each appellate court has since rejected the companies’ additional arguments.

Fossil fuel giants are now returning to the Supreme Court with renewed and additional petitions, hoping the highest court will overrule the lower courts’ decisions about where the climate cases should be tried.

Read more from the DeSmog series: Tracking the Lawsuits Fighting for Climate Accountability

Meanwhile, legal developments continue to frustrate the industry’s attempts to evade accountability. Cases filed by Hawaiian communities and by the state of Massachusetts are proceeding to the discovery phase in state courts, a pre-trial process of gathering evidence, during which internal industry documents could surface and shed new light on the extent of the industry’s deceptive behavior. Last month a federal district judge in California, who had previously tossed cases filed by Oakland and San Francisco, issued an order to send the cases, which were revived by a federal appeals court, back to state court. And New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin followed in the footsteps of seven other Democratic state prosecutors in filing a consumer fraud case against ExxonMobil and other oil majors.

A spokesperson for Exxon did not respond to a request for comment. BP America declined to comment.

Judge Kelly’s order to send the District of Columbia’s case back to the lower court is temporarily paused as the oil companies prepare an appeal, as they have every other time a federal judge made a similar ruling.

“Chevron plans to appeal this ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” Boutrous, Jr. said.

None of these appeals, however, have been successful. Loyola University’s Sokol sees these repeated rejections as further affirmation that local and state governments have the right to try these claims in state courts.

Johl agreed.

“These cases were filed in state court to hold polluters accountable for climate deception under state law,” she said. “And that’s where courts have unanimously agreed they should proceed.”

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420 random grab drilled

fossil Fuel Companies Try Again to Shake Baltimore’s Climate Liability Suit

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involves indiana how? team red RAGA?

may 2022

Attorney General Todd Rokita is defending Hoosiers against an attempt by Baltimore to use parochial state courts to impose climate change policy in Indiana as well as every other state across the country.

Baltimore sued numerous fossil-fuel companies, claiming the companies’ activities contributed to global climate change and their activities constituted a public nuisance. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently ruled to send the case back to state court. This decision is now being challenged by Attorney General Rokita with an amicus brief asking the full court to rehear the case.

“No one state has the right to set policy in another state. By pushing this case back to state court, these federal judges are establishing a dangerous precedent,” Attorney General Rokita said. “This issue affects more than just Maryland—it affects all of us across the country. Hoosiers’ concerns and values are my first priority, and I refuse to allow Maryland’s state court to dictate how we do things here in Indiana.”

Attorney General Rokita also has led multistate coalitions against similar efforts by several U.S. cities to use their own state courts to exclude other states from the climate-change policymaking process. Those cities include Hoboken, in New Jersey, and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California.

Attorney General Rokita will continue to fight for Hoosiers by backing the rule of law and preserving legal precedent.

Indiana’s amicus brief is attached.

A headshot of Attorney General Todd Rokita is available here.

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https://www.courthousenews.com/big-oil-must-face-california-city-and-county-lawsuits-over-climate-change/

cn seems legit

sAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The Ninth Circuit affirmed Tuesday that lawsuits seeking to hold the world’s largest energy companies financially liable for climate change and the rising sea levels that threaten California’s coastal communities should stay in state court, setting the stage for a legal offensive comparable to one that won multibillion-dollar awards against Big Tobacco.

The rulingcomes after a three-judge panel took a second look at a jurisdictional dispute between the energy companies and four municipalities after being ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court.

San Mateo County, Marin County and the cities of Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach in San Diego County sued Chevron, BP and three dozen other oil, gas and coal companies in separate state courts in July 2017, claiming the fuel companies created a public nuisance by hiding for nearly 50 years that fossil fuel consumption was heating and damaging the earth.

After the cases were removed to federal court, the local governments fought to remand them to state court, arguing state law claims of public nuisance should be decided by California’s judicial system.

The energy giants objected, insisting the claims are governed by federal law because they implicate “uniquely federal interests,” including matters of interstate and international commerce and environmental policy.

In March 2018, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria remanded the cases to their respective state courts.

A unanimous three-judge Ninth Circuit panel upheld Chhabria’s ruling two years later, finding the federal court lacks jurisdiction to consider state law claims. Writing for the majority, U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee, rejected the oil companies’ argument that because they provided fuel to the U.S. government through service contracts, they were “acting under” a federal officer’s directions.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted the energy companies’ petition for certiorari and sent the cases back to the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its ruling in light of the high court’s 2021 decision in BP p.l.c. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, where it held that a federal appeals court can review a federal judge’s entire remand order. In that case, the city of Baltimore sued 26 oil companies for creating the greenhouse gases responsible for rising sea levels.

But Ikuta and her fellow panelists, U.S. Circuit Judges Morgan Christen and Kenneth Lee, declined to change their minds, sticking to the long-standing principle that federal courts should narrowly limit their reach to protect the jurisdiction of state courts.

“Our adherence to this doctrine does not change merely because plaintiffs raise novel and sweeping causes of action,” she wrote. “We therefore reject the broad interpretations of removal jurisdiction urged on us by the energy companies and affirm the district court’s remand order.”

The panel also rejected the argument that the energy companies’ conduct occurred on federal land and must be governed by federal law. The judges found that while some of the companies operated on federal land, such as the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve run by Chevron predecessor Standard Oil, the companies fail to account for how much of their conduct took place on federal enclaves. “The connection between conduct on federal enclaves and the counties’ alleged injuries is too attenuated and remote to establish that the counties’ cause of action is governed by the federal law applicable to any federal enclave,” Ikuta wrote.

The companies had also argued that the cases should stay in federal court because a portion of their fossil-fuel extraction took place on the Outer Continental Shelf, which falls under federal jurisdiction. “We reject this argument, because the connection between such conduct and the injuries alleged by the plaintiffs here is too attenuated to give rise to jurisdiction,” Ikuta wrote, reasoning that the counties’ lawsuit claim only local injuries, and focus on the companies’ “concerted campaign” to hide the harmful effects of fossil fuels from the public. “These allegations do not refer to actions taken on the Outer Continental Shelf,” she wrote.

The cities and counties praised the opinion as “clear and reasoned” in a statement.

“We appreciate the panel’s thorough review of this matter and are eager to return to the state courts where we filed our cases more than four years ago,” the plaintiffs said an email sent through the law firm Sher Edling LLP. “It is time to go to trial to hold these defendants accountable for deceiving consumers about the dangers associated with the use of their products, and to protect our taxpayers from having to bear the enormous costs resulting from that deception.”

The same Ninth Circuit panel found U.S. District Judge William Alsup lacked jurisdiction when he dismissed similar lawsuits brought by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. The judges remanded the cases to Alsup so he can reconsider if alternative grounds justify keeping the two lawsuits in federal court, though their ruling Tuesday means those cases will likely end up in state court as well.

In an email, BP head of corporate communications Megan Baldino said the company could not speak about pending litigation. Chevron spokesman Braden Reddallsaid in an email that the company “respectfully disagrees” with the panel’s decision.

“Plaintiffs’ claims are based on allegations about worldwide carbon emissions and address global climate change — national and international issues that can be governed only by federal, not state, law. The court acknowledges that cases such as this one “raise novel and sweeping causes of action,'” Reddall said, noting that like Alsup, the Second Circuit had dismissed nearly identical claims as “sprawling” and overly ambitious. “Although the court has decided that plaintiffs’ claims for now can proceed past this preliminary stage, Chevron looks forward to additional challenges that should put an early end to this meritless lawsuit.”

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Baltimore Climate Case Passes Another Hurdle

The city of Baltimore is one step closer to holding fossil fuel companies liable for localized climate impacts. A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the companies’ appeal to move the suit to federal court; it will proceed in Maryland state court. It's big news for the handful of other cases awaiting decisions on jurisdiction, and comes on the heels of similar decisions in Colorado and Rhode Island. Climate liability cases have traditionally been easier to dismiss in federal court, which is why oil companies want to argue them there.

who does Maryland’s Republican governor really work for?

Eric Cortellessa / Washington Monthly January 6, 2020

Larry Hogan has more in common with Donald Trump than his reputation suggests.

https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/07/20/baltimore-climate-damages-liability-lawsuit/

Baltimore became the second East Coast city to file a climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies. Its suit, announced Friday, becomes the 12th suit filed across the country aiming to hold the industry accountable for flooding and other harms caused by climate change.

The mayor and city council of Baltimore filed a complaint in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City that ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and 23 other fossil fuel producers and distributors violated Maryland laws, including its consumer protection law.

“These oil and gas companies knew for decades that their products would harm communities like ours, and we’re going to hold them accountable,” Baltimore City Solicitor Andre M. Davis said. “Baltimore’s residents, workers, and businesses shouldn’t have to pay for the damage knowingly caused by these companies.”

Baltimore, the largest city in Maryland and the fifth-largest on the East Coast, is already experiencing the effects of sea level rise and extreme weather driven by climate change. The city absorbed a 7 ½-foot storm surge from Hurricane Isabel in 2003, causing a devastating flood, and had Superstorm Sandy’s track changed slightly, a 20-foot storm surge could have inundated the city in 2012. The city’s Inner Harbor, a tourist hub and a key economic driver for Baltimore, faces frequent flooding even without storms of that size. Nearby Ellicott City, 12 miles to the west, has been devastated by flash flooding twice in the last three years, with 1,000-year floods striking that community after extreme downpours in 2016 and earlier this year.

Baltimore needs to upgrade infrastructure to be ready for future flooding, although city officials are not yet certain what that will cost. “The City is in the final stages of its latest Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project, which be out for public comment in August and will have more details about the kinds of projects that Baltimore will have to undertake to address rising seas and other consequences of climate change,” Suzanne Sangree, chief of the Baltimore City Law Department’s public safety practice group, wrote in an email.

“All cities are behind in this kind of preparation, in large part because the fossil fuel industry has been burying information and preventing meaningful regulation and preparation,” Sangree said.

The city filed its suit in state court, where most legal experts say it has a better chance for success. New York City, the first East Coast city to sue the oil industry for climate damages, had its case dismissed by a federal judge on Thursday. San Francisco and Oakland also had their cases thrown out of U.S. District Court. All are expected to appeal those decisions, but have not yet done so.

Those roadblocks have not deterred other communities from joining the wave of suits, however. Rhode Island recently became the first state to file a suit. And now Baltimore joins the list of cities that believe the industry should pay for the damages it says have been overwhelmingly driven by its products.

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