Lawsuit: Energy companies to blame for heat-related death

By EPN Staff

Four years after a woman was found dead in her car during a Pacific Northwest heatwave, her daughter is suing seven oil and gas companies, alleging they’re responsible for the record heat that led to her mother’s death.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in Washington’s King County Superior Court and subsequently moved to federal court, represents another front in an ongoing, sophisticated advocacy campaign targeting energy companies. The case cites a controversial recent study that argues the 2021 heatwave was “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.

Why it matters

This case is landmark climate litigation against energy companies for the wrongful death of a person, according to the Center for Climate Integrity, an anti-fossil fuel advocacy group that approached the plaintiff in 2023.

Environmental activist groups have long relied on significant funding from deep-pocketed foundations and wealthy donors focused on smearing oil, coal and natural gas – which account for more than 80 percent of U.S. energy consumption – and publishing reports and studies to support expansion of renewable, intermittent energy sources like solar and wind.

The study cited in the Washington lawsuit was published by World Weather Attribution (WWA), a research and advocacy center focused on promoting a link between extreme weather events and human-caused climate change.

The WWA was initially a joint venture with Climate Central. The WWA works independently now, and is funded by similar groups like the Bezos Earth Fund, European Climate Foundation and Grantham Foundation.

In fact, most of these groups support progressive policies. Friederike Otto, one of the architects behind WWA, told Politicoin 2021 that her efforts to link extreme events to climate change are designed to support legal action against fossil fuel companies.

Meanwhile, other groups have supported state efforts to advance legislation that forces oil and gas companies to pay retroactive fees, and municipalities’ lawsuits against energy companies. 

The bigger picture

While coverage has largely focused on details as described in the lawsuit, others have flagged key omissions, such as the air conditioning system in the victim’s car was broken and that the extreme heat was predicted well in advance.

And questions persist around the validity of “rapid attribution analysis,” the strategy employed by WWA and its allies, and its reliance on modeling data since 1950. Failure to include more robust datasets ignore longer-term observational data.

A more thorough analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Washington and University of Alabama in Huntsville found “no evidence that greenhouse warming resulted in the amplification of key elements of the 2021 heat wave, such as the record-breaking midtropospheric ridging over southwest British Columbia…

“Global warming may have made a small contribution, but an extreme heat wave, driven by natural variability, would have occurred in any case.”

Additional details

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, Shell and BP subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company are named as defendants in this case.

Other climate lawsuits have garnered attention from the Trump administration. In May, the Justice Department sued Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Vermont to try stopping those states from suing oil and gas companies.