[[link removed]]

FAMILY SUES FOSSIL FUEL GIANTS FOR WRONGFUL DEATH IN FIRST CLIMATE
DISASTER CASE OF ITS KIND  
[[link removed]]


 

Ruth Milka
May 30, 2025
Nation of Change
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ A Washington woman is taking Big Oil to court over her mother’s
death in a historic heatwave, opening a new front in the fight to hold
polluters legally accountable for climate-fueled deaths. _

,

 

In a legal first, a Washington state woman has filed a wrongful death
lawsuit against some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies,
seeking to hold them accountable for the death of her mother during an
unprecedented heatwave that scientists say would have been
“virtually impossible” without climate change.

Misti Leon filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court against
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and BP
subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company. She alleges the companies are
liable for the death of her mother, Juliana Leon, who died of
hyperthermia after being exposed to extreme heat in June 2021.

Juliana Leon, 65, was driving home from a doctor’s appointment in
Seattle on June 28, 2021—what would become the hottest day in the
city’s history, with temperatures reaching 108°F. After pulling
over and rolling down her windows, she was later found unresponsive in
her car. Emergency workers recorded her internal body temperature at
110°F.

That week, a historic “heat dome” settled over the Pacific
Northwest, breaking temperature records and overwhelming emergency
services. A rapid attribution study released days after the event
concluded that the 2021 heatwave would have been “virtually
impossible without human-caused climate change.” Across Oregon and
Washington, roughly 600 more people died that week than would have
been expected.

“This is a victim of the climate crisis,” said Aaron Regunberg,
accountability project director for Public Citizen’s Climate
Program. “They caused the climate crisis and deceived the public
about the dangerousness of their products in order to block and delay
solutions that could prevent heat deaths like Juliana’s.”

Leon’s case is the first known attempt to hold fossil fuel companies
directly responsible for a specific climate-related death. Her lawsuit
contends that oil and gas corporations have long known their
activities would cause dangerous warming and extreme weather events,
yet chose to mislead the public about the risks.

“Defendants have known for all of Julie’s life that their
affirmative misrepresentations and omissions would claim lives,” the
lawsuit states. “Julie is a victim of Defendants’ conduct.”

Legal experts say the case could set a precedent in climate
litigation. A 2023 article in the _Harvard Environmental Law
Review_ argued that fossil fuel companies could, under the right
circumstances, be criminally prosecuted for climate-related deaths.
David Arkush, one of the article’s authors and director of Public
Citizen’s Climate Program, called Leon’s lawsuit a major step.

“Why shouldn’t we hold someone legally accountable for this kind
of behavior?” Arkush said. “There would be no question that we
would hold them accountable if they caused other types of deaths. This
is no different. They foresaw this, they did it anyway, and they hurt
people.”

The lawsuit seeks damages to be determined at trial and demands a
public education campaign to counter “decades of misinformation”
by fossil fuel companies. The complaint accuses the companies of
promoting fossil fuels as safe while actively working to suppress
evidence of the harms associated with greenhouse gas emissions.

Although representatives from Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Phillips
66 declined to comment on the lawsuit, and ExxonMobil and Chevron did
not respond to requests for comment, industry lobbying groups have
consistently argued that the courts are the wrong venue for
climate-related claims. The American Petroleum Institute has called
such lawsuits “meritless” and insists that climate change policy
should be addressed by Congress, not through litigation.

In recent years, dozens of cities, counties, and states—including
California, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Rhode Island—have filed
lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, accusing them of misleading
the public about climate change. Two states, Vermont and New York,
have passed “climate superfund” laws, designed to make fossil fuel
companies pay for damage caused by extreme weather. The Trump
administration’s Justice Department filed lawsuits against those
states in early May, seeking to block implementation of the laws.

Court outcomes have been mixed. A Pennsylvania judge recently
dismissed a climate lawsuit filed by Bucks County, arguing that
regulating greenhouse gas emissions falls under federal jurisdiction.
“These state lawsuits just don’t really do anything other than
clog the courts,” said Chevron attorney Ted Boutrous in that case.
However, other lawsuits have been allowed to proceed. In January, the
U.S. Supreme Court declined to block Honolulu’s climate suit against
oil companies, and in March, it rejected a request by Republican
attorneys general to halt similar state-level cases.

Legal scholars believe Leon’s case stands out because of its
emotional and narrative clarity. “The advantage of this lawsuit is
that it puts an individual human face on the massive harmful
consequences of collective climate inaction,” said Douglas Kysar,
faculty director of the Law, Environment and Animals Program at Yale
Law School. “Not only that, the complaint tells a story of industry
betrayal of public trust through the eyes of a particular person.”

Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund also described the case
as “an important moment for climate accountability.”

Regunberg echoed that sentiment, urging prosecutors and lawmakers to
consider the broader implications of the case. “The purpose of
criminal law enforcement is to deter future crimes, promote public
safety, punish wrongdoers, and encourage the convicted to pursue less
harmful practices,” he said. “All of these public safety goals
apply to Big Oil’s continuing contributions to climate change, and
prosecutors across the country should take note of this new wrongful
death suit and carefully consider how the climate effects their
constituents are experiencing fit the criminal laws they are charged
with enforcing.”

_Ruth Milka started as an intern for NationofChange in 2015. Known for
her thoughtful and thorough approach, Ruth is committed to shedding
light on the intersection of environmental issues and their impact on
human communities. Her reporting consistently highlights the urgency
of environmental challenges while emphasizing the human stories at the
heart of these issues. Ruth’s work is driven by a passion for truth
and a dedication to informing the public about critical global matters
concerning the environment and human rights._

_At NationofChange, our mission is to help people create a more
compassionate, responsible, and value-driven world, powered by
communities that focus on positive solutions to social and economic
problems. We strive to accomplish this mission through FEARLESS
JOURNALISM combined with BOOTS-ON-THE-GROUND ACTIVISM in order to
create real-world, actionable strategies for change._

* Climate Change
[[link removed]]
* big oil
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]