US woman brings first-ever wrongful death lawsuit against big oil [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Thu 29 May 2025 15.20 EDT
Last modified on Thu 29 May 2025 16.15 EDT
A woman has brought the first-ever wrongful death lawsuit against big oil, claiming fossil fuel companies’ climate negligence caused her mother’s death during a major heatwave. Juliana Leon died of hyperthermia in Seattle at age 65 during the 2021 Pacific north-west heat dome – an event that killed nearly 200 people, and which meteorologists say would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused global warming.
“The day Julie died was the hottest day ever recorded in Washington with temperatures in Seattle, where Julie died, peaking around 108F,” reads the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday by Misti Leon, Juliana Leon’s daughter Because they failed to warn the public about the dangers of planet-heating emissions, major fossil fuel companies should be held accountable for that death, the case argues.
“When a tragedy like Julie’s death results from the prolific use of fossil fuels, it is easy to dismiss the misfortune as an accident rather than a foreseeable consequence of Defendants’ deception,” the lawsuit says. It names ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and the BP-managed subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company as defendants. The Guardian has contacted each of the companies named in the suit for comment. Shell and Phillips 66 declined to comment.
The new lawsuit represents a new frontier for climate accountability litigation, following dozens of lawsuits brought by cities and states against big oil in recent years. Previous suits accused companies of breaching product liability and consumer protection laws and engaging in fraud and racketeering. But Wednesday’s case is the first attempt to hold oil companies responsible for an individual climate-related death.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/oil-industry-wrongful-death-lawsuit
Link to SUIT (PDF) - https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Leon_v_Exxon_Complaint.pdf
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