Judge dismisses Carrboro’s climate lawsuit against Duke Energy

A North Carolina Business Court judge has dismissed Carrboro’s lawsuit against Duke Energy. The Orange County town had blamed the utility company for local expenses linked to climate change.

“Here, a municipality seeks to hold a public utility company liable for damages resulting from extreme weather events allegedly caused by climate change based on allegations that (1) the company misled the American public for decades about the effects of fossil fuel consumption on the environment; and (2) as a result, the public’s transition to alternative forms of energy was delayed,” wrote Judge Mark Davis in a 32-page order issued Thursday. “[T]he Court concludes that this case presents nonjusticiable questions and dismisses the claims asserted by the municipality in their entirety.”

Davis determined that Carrboro had legal standing to file suit. Yet “Carrboro’s claims in this action are clearly nonjusticiable pursuant to the political question doctrine,” the judge wrote.

“As an initial matter, it is clear that North Carolina’s energy policy is textually committed to branches of government other than the judiciary,” Davis wrote.

“[I]t is clear that issues concerning fossil fuel-related emissions have been delegated to the Utilities Commission and to the Department of Environmental Quality,” he added. “Moreover, Carrboro’s claims in this action beg the question of what emission levels would have been appropriate during the time period at issue in order to avoid contributing to irreversible climate change. That is precisely the sort of policy question that requires the exercise of discretion from other branches of our State’s government.”

Davis rejected the town’s argument that courts regularly address the types of complaints spelled out in the suit against Duke.

“Carrboro’s assertion ignores the fact that many significant issues regarding climate change are not only the subject of complex scientific debate but also implicate political, economic, and moral choices made by governments and members of the public literally across the globe,” Davis wrote. “Although courts are generally capable of (and are regularly tasked with) adjudicating complex cases involving scientific issues, the present action is of an entirely different dimension — one for which the common law doctrines Carrboro seeks to invoke fail to provide the Court with a manageable framework within which to decide these claims.”

“Although Carrboro attempts to analogize this action to traditional environmental pollution cases, such analogies are inapt,” the order continued. “In those lawsuits, distinct lines of causation can be discerned from specifically identified polluters to individual victims. Here, conversely, climate change is non-linear and is the result of the collective impact of acts by literally billions of unrelated emitters dispersed throughout the globe.”

“Moreover, it is simply impossible to quantify the vast swaths of information received (much less found credible) by these global actors concerning the potential dangers or benefits of fossil fuels and their link to climate change over the course of decades,” Davis wrote. “It is likewise impossible to determine the extent to which the presence — or absence — of such information would have tangibly affected the emission of greenhouse gases or the ensuing acceleration/deceleration of climate change (and its effects).”

“In short, courts lack the capacity to resolve these issues through traditional methods of judicial adjudication,” the judge explained. “Carrboro’s theory in this case would require a factfinder to make decisions based on pure conjecture divorced from any clearly articulable or objective standards, necessarily requiring rank speculation as to the internal motivations of hundreds of millions of individuals in the United States and the cumulative effect of their actions on a global phenomenon.”

The nature of carbon emissions targeted in Carrboro’s lawsuit “makes any attempt to attribute a specific source of emissions to a specific climate change-related impact a futile endeavor,” Davis wrote. The town’s claims are “fatally imprecise and lacking in concreteness.”

“It is anything but clear how being ‘materially further along’ in transitioning to renewable energy sources as a general proposition would have prevented Carrboro from suffering storm-related property damage,” the judge explained. “What is crystal clear, however, is the fact that a jury could not make such a determination without engaging in utter conjecture.”

“Judge dismisses Carrboro’s climate lawsuit against Duke Energy” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.