The Financial Times reports this morning that a gaggle of trial lawyers, environmentalists and “concerned” scientists are attempting to sue polluting corporations via class action for the damage apparently caused by global warming. The suits target not just corporations, but regulatory agencies, state and federal governments, and even NGOs and philanthropic organizations — for their efforts to spur economic growth in the developing world.

And while you may scoff at the prospect of proving global warming by a preponderance of the evidence, much less proving individual polluters are responsible for floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, the article points out that there are a number of back-door meneuvers these groups could pull that could get around causation — suing on behalf of shareholders, for example:

For the moment, a company is unlikely to be successfully sued merely because of its greenhouse gas emissions, in the view of James Cameron of Baker & McKenzie, the international law firm.

He warns, however, that its risk could be greatly increased if it were deemed to have acted culpably by, say, lobbying against greenhouse gas regulations.

Companies that delay taking action on climate change are also at risk of being sued by their investors. They could be accused of incurring higher costs as a result of unduly delaying emission reductions, damaging a company’s reputation and failing to disclose investment-relevant information.

“Shareholder actions might follow, claiming that directors and officers of such companies should be liable for not adequately addressing the potential threats brought by climate-change related regulation,” according to Swiss Re, the reinsurer that is concerned about the implications for directors and officers’ liability insurance.

As if the developing world didn’t have enough burden to bear. Now helping to lift destitute economies out of poverty and into industry could land your ass in court.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2003 at 4:58 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.