Portside

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.

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