The Dallas Morning News’ Eric Torbenson examines a potential growth area for business plaintiffs’ lawyers and another burgeoning risk for business — lawsuits asserting responsibility for damagres caused by climate change. And guess who’s right in the middle of it? None other than Houston’s longtime business plaintiff’s lawyer, Steve Susman:
Steve Susman of Susman Godfrey in Houston has been a pioneer in such litigation. He led the charge this year to force TXU Energy into building fewer coal-fired plants in Texas than it had planned.
Now he’s among several lawyers talking with a group of Inuits in northern Canada who have seen an entire island sink under rising seas from global warming. The tribe is weighing its options, including suing carbon-emitting corporations such as power companies for heating the planet, he said.
“Melting glaciers isn’t going to get that much going, but wait until the first big ski area closes because it has no snow,” said Mr. Susman, who teaches a climate-change litigation course at the University of Houston Law School. “Or wait until portions of lower Manhattan and San Francisco are under water.”
Some lawyers are trying to tie the damage from Hurricane Katrina to global warming ñ and the energy companies who may have contributed to that warming.
Mr. Susman predicts large insurance companies, which have paid out billions of dollars in claims in the past two decades because of powerful hurricanes, eventually will become plaintiffs in broad greenhouse-effect litigation against energy companies. [. . .]
“You’re going to see some really serious exposure on the part of companies that are emitting CO-2,” Mr. Susman predicted. “I can’t say for sure it’s going to be as big as the tobacco settlements, but then again it may even be bigger. . .”
Oh, my.
It was only a matter of time – crank science yields bad legal outcomes.
First, Susman is going to have to prove that global warming is occurring and then that it is being caused by CO2. Those are both difficult tasks.
Rick
Steve’s right, but the beauty (such as it is) of Susman’s line of work is that it really doesn’t matter what the facts are. He’s built a career and a firm by tickling prejudices and gullibility of judges and juries, and when he finds a new soft spot he rushes in.
The point is a subtle one. Surely Susman will use experts to help jurors calcify the decision they walked in with, but that’s just one of many possible means to that end. For Susman the likelihood of victory is far more important than the facts (note the disconnect). His real game to pander to prejudice, resentment, and partiality. Tom has blogged extensively on plaintiff’s lawyers’ and government prosecutors’ employment of this strategy.
Perhaps most worrisome is that the experts on this subject matter (Susman and his peers) are convinced enough of the profits available to them to turn their attention to global warming in the first place.